Employee welfare: Developing change strategies to address empathy burnout in caring professions

Abstract

The general health and wellbeing of an organisation’s workforce, also referred to as employee welfare, remains a crucial component in organisational and leadership planning. At the level of an individual, welfare is often related to one’s level of satisfaction, engagement and dedication. At the organisational level, welfare can be associated with productivity, turnover, and employee relationships. An employee’s welfare, particularly in a caring profession, is often subject to the emotionally demanding needs of their patients, which significantly affects their ability to remain empathic and compassionate towards others, and themselves. Empathy, like any emotional resource, can be exhausted if not replenished often. Compassion fatigue, also known as empathy burnout, is an emotional state experienced by those working in emotionally demanding roles, such as healthcare professionals, police service and social workers. The common symptoms of empathy burnout include depression, anxiety, absenteeism and lethargy. At an organisational level, it is imperative that leadership decisions consider the implications of their profession to the wider workforce, and so develop strategies to prevent empathy burnout. This paper explored the perspectives of employee welfare at a local hospital to develop strategies for change that may assist caring professionals in managing their stress and maintaining levels of empathy. From the exploratory research project, strategies emerged that could be actioned to improve employee welfare across the organisation. These strategies for change included strengthening communication lines to eliminate barriers to support, bolstering the existing employee assistance programme, developing resilience training schemes, and closing the gap between executive leadership and staff. Caring professions are positions/roles including but not limited to nursing, clinicians, physicians, paramedics, mental health employee, caregiving, counsellors, physiologists, orderly and welfare officers.