Roundtable Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

The Correlates of Organizational Compassion (#271)

Prasuna Reddy 1 , Ace V Simpson 2 , Ben Farr-Wharton 2 , Ros Prichard 2 , Aglae Hernandez Grande 2
  1. Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia

Over the past fifteen years, compassion towards suffering workplace colleagues has emerged as an area of organizational discourse. Organizational compassion is theorized as a four-part process of individual and collective (1) Noticing, (2) Empathising, (3) Assessing (understanding the circumstances) and (4) Responding (NEAR) to alleviate a colleagues suffering. Beneficial outcomes of organizational compassion include enhanced positive affectivity, connectivity, citizenship and wellbeing. To date this research tends to be qualitative. The current paper reports on the findings of a quantitative study using the NEAR Organizational Compassion Scale in a NSW health district with six hospitals and 11,000 employees. We report on multilevel models linking organizational compassion with employee wellbeing, psychological safety, and workplace bullying. Personnel data including leave, injuries, compensation claims and absenteeism are considered in the models.