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Many human resources courses and management guidance emphasize a key attribute in creating a productive workplace: Empathy. The ” ability to share someone else's feelings” is a key skill in the work environment.

But is there a connection between a well-designed wellness program and empathy? A recent Benefits Pro piece titled “Employees don't feel employers are empathetic enough” outlines a connection.

The piece highlights a “new survey from benefits administration tech company Businessolver shows that while 60 percent of CEOs view their organization as 'empathetic,' only about a quarter of rank-and-file workers feel the same way.”

And while “83 percent of all respondents agree that treating employees well was a key behavior,” other areas of “widespread consensus” were very interesting: “The importance of being attentive and considerate of customer needs (80 percent), engaging in ethical business practices (78 percent), and taking care of employees’ mental and physical health (78 percent).”

In other words, while an overwhelming majority of respondents feel that an empathetic workplace is important, some 78 percent of employees feel that “taking care of employees’ mental and physical health” is a significant a way to demonstrate empathy as is focusing on customer needs and ethical business practices.

Adam Waytz, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business, said: “Various research programs have begun to show that empathy is an integral component to the workplace and gravely impacts a company's bottom line.”

Recent research from the Global Wellness Institute further connected workplace wellness and empathy as work practices continue to evolve: “Workplace wellness approaches will also evolve beyond ‘programs' because work itself will undergo radical changes in the future. For instance, people will increasingly be replaced by computers/machines for analytical and specialized work, as well as for routine and repetitive tasks. The swelling global army of remote/virtual workers will bring changes we’ve not yet begun to grasp. And in the coming work scenarios, people will need to bring to work a full set of human qualities related to wellness, such as intrinsic motivation, creativity, energy, intuition and empathy.”