What does empathy mean as a company value?

Changing what you do because of the position somebody else is in. As a feeling it cannot be observed or recognised; as a change in behaviour it can be described precisely.

How do you recognise empathy at work without sounding patronising?

Name what the person actually did. A description of an action reads as an observation, while a description of their character reads as an assessment, which is what makes these messages feel awkward.

What empathetic work is most overlooked?

Speaking for people who are not in the room. Asking what the on-call engineer will have to do at 3am, or what support will have to explain, is empathy directed at somebody who will never know it happened.

Is empathy a soft value?

It has hard outputs. Rejection emails that do not read as brush-offs, outage explanations in the customer’s language and hard news delivered on a Monday all change measurable things.

Company values

Empathy

Empathy is described as a feeling, which makes it impossible to recognise. What can be recognised is what somebody did about it.

A feeling cannot be recognised

Empathy is usually described as something a person has. Compassionate. Emotionally intelligent. Really cares about people.

None of it is observable and none of it is repeatable, which is why recognition under this heading so often feels like a personality review rather than a thank-you.

Speak for the person who is not there

The most useful version happens in rooms where the affected person is absent. Asking what the on-call engineer will have to do at 3am. Asking what support will have to explain.

That person will never know it happened, which is exactly why somebody else has to say it did.

How you would know

Adjusts for the other person: Changes the format, the timing or the level of a conversation to fit who is receiving it.
Notices before being told: Spots that a colleague is struggling without waiting for them to say so.
Argues for the absent: Represents the user, the support team or the on-call engineer who is not in the room.
Delivers hard news carefully: Takes the extra time to say a difficult thing in a way that can be heard.

6 messages that name it

You noticed I was underwater and took two things off me without making it a conversation.
Peer
Credits tact as much as the help.
Thank you for asking what the on-call engineer would have to do at 3am. Nobody else was going to.
Peer
Empathy for someone not in the room.
You explained the outage to the customer in their language rather than ours. They renewed.
Manager
Ties adjustment to a commercial result.
Sofia rewrote the rejection email three times so it would not read as a brush-off. It did not.
Manager
Effort and outcome, both specific.
Thanks for pausing the review when you could tell I had had a bad morning.
Report
Small, observable, personal.
You told me the news on a Monday rather than a Friday so I had somebody to talk to about it.
Report
A choice most people would not have thought about.

What its absence looks like

Where empathy is absent, everything is technically communicated. Decisions are announced on Friday afternoons, rejections read as form letters, and nobody in the room is speaking for the person who will be paged at 3am.

Recognising it well

Describe the action, not the quality. “You are so empathetic” is a compliment; “you took two things off me without making it a conversation” is a record.
Recognise advocacy for absent people. Somebody arguing for the on-call engineer or the support queue is doing the version with no direct reward.
Watch the timing choices. Delivering hard news on a Monday rather than a Friday is a small decision that says somebody thought about the recipient.

Questions people ask

What does empathy mean as a company value?: Changing what you do because of the position somebody else is in. As a feeling it cannot be observed or recognised; as a change in behaviour it can be described precisely.
How do you recognise empathy at work without sounding patronising?: Name what the person actually did. A description of an action reads as an observation, while a description of their character reads as an assessment, which is what makes these messages feel awkward.
What empathetic work is most overlooked?: Speaking for people who are not in the room. Asking what the on-call engineer will have to do at 3am, or what support will have to explain, is empathy directed at somebody who will never know it happened.
Is empathy a soft value?: It has hard outputs. Rejection emails that do not read as brush-offs, outage explanations in the customer’s language and hard news delivered on a Monday all change measurable things.