Organisational/Team Empathy
Goal:
To assess the ability to understand people from different socioeconomic classes and racial/ethnic backgrounds within the context of institutionalised inequalities and disparities. This domain also encompasses attitudes, knowledge, and behaviours towards broader societal issues (civic empathy) and the role of context in understanding societal impact.
Key Areas for Assessment:
Contextual Understanding of Systemic Barriers: Questions assessing beliefs about whether barriers like lack of opportunity, discrimination, or poverty prevent certain groups from succeeding. Beliefs about the impact of discrimination.
Macro Self-Other Awareness and Perspective-Taking: Items relating to applying perspective-taking and self-other awareness at a societal or group level. Comfort or willingness to interact with people from different racial or ethnic backgrounds. Taking into account the political perspectives of others, even if disagreed with.
Civic Empathy Attributes: Questions related to kindness, altruism, righteousness, mindfulness, and authenticity concerning societal issues. Attitudes towards helping humanity more generally.
Beliefs about Social Responsibility and Social Justice: Items assessing beliefs in government's role in social welfare, protecting minority rights, promoting quality of life, and ensuring basic needs are met. Belief in the importance of social justice actions.
Pro-social Behaviours (Societal Level): Questions about engagement in community service, voting, or taking action to help others who are worse off.
Belief in Collective Action: Questions assessing the belief that collective effort can lead to positive societal change.
Please reach out to contact@drjackieking.com.au for the link to your bespoke group survey. Individuals can also engage in the Self Empathy and Empathy for Others assessments to better understand their own attitudes and behaviours.
Organisational/Team Empathy Considerations
Team Level:
Aggregating responses for a team can highlight collective strengths and common challenges. The team can identify shared areas for improvement (e.g., lack of understanding between specific roles, low sense of belonging). This can lead to team Ideation and Prototyping of team norms, communication strategies, or initiatives to build connection
Organisational Level:
Aggregating responses across the organisation reveals broader cultural patterns.This helps identify systemic issues (e.g., barriers to understanding between departments, lack of perceived influence among certain employee groups). This informs enterprise-level ideation and prototyping of new policies, capacity building programs around dialogue and societal cohesion, or changes to organisational structure to foster common purpose, greater connection and reduce otherness.
Recommendations:
Teams and organisations can check how they are progressing against each of these recommended practices.
Implement capacity building and educational programs focused on systemic racism, unconscious bias, and the historical and ongoing impacts of discrimination.
Facilitate structured dialogues, workshops, or employee resource groups that promote active listening and difficult dialogue, cross-cultural understanding, and perspective-taking
Encourage exposure to diverse viewpoints and experiences through storytelling, guest speakers, or inclusive team projects.
Promote active bystander intervention training specifically addressing discrimination, harassment, and exclusion.
Clearly define expected behaviours and provide safe channels for reporting issues.
Foster a culture where speaking up against unfair treatment is encouraged and supported.
Explicitly link taking supportive action to core company values and recognition programs.
Actively promote a culture where diverse perspectives are welcomed and integrated into the collective identity by celebrating diverse identities and perspectives.
Provide more opportunities for employees to provide input and feel their voice matter, investigate underlying issues like trust or resource.