Kindness at work can mean limiting meetings, giving honest feedback, and bending rules when circumstances warrant, according to workplace experts. As the pace of work accelerates, small acts of kindness—from supporting employees through family crises to protecting time for reflection—improve engagement and productivity.
As workplace stress intensifies and meeting culture expands, experts say kindness creates environments where employees feel valued and are more likely to invest their best effort and passion in their work.
When Beth Brown’s six-month-old daughter fell ill with COVID-19 and her mother passed away within days, the director of health and well-being at ComPsych faced an impossible choice: fulfill her obligations on a major work project or care for her family.
She sent a note to her senior project director explaining the crisis and her necessary absence. Instead of calling with tasks and updates, the director reached out to ask whether Brown was okay.
“In the grand scheme of things, this is not important,” the colleague said, according to Brown. “It’ll be here when you get back. I’ll be there when you’re back.” Brown said hearing those words felt like “there was a brick taken off my chest.”
That moment of kindness illustrates how simple gestures—acknowledging an employee’s humanity during hardship, protecting their time, providing honest feedback, or bending rigid rules—can improve workplace culture and employee well-being. Experts say such acts become increasingly important as the pace of work accelerates and meeting culture expands.
Creating safe spaces
The importance of treating others with kindness is a first lesson most parents teach children. Yet kindness sometimes falls by the wayside in work settings that emphasize competition, deadlines, and pressure. Financial worries and fears of layoffs can stifle generous impulses.
Perhaps that’s why acts of kindness on the job are often memorable. Molly MacDermot, director of special initiatives at Girls Write Now, a nonprofit mentorship and writing program, felt supported by her boss when her father died eight years ago and her mother passed away six months ago.
“It’s really important to feel human, to be allowed to be human, which is getting the grace to just deal with the bumps in life,” MacDermot said.
Sociologist Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of “The Three Mothers” and “Erased,” said kindness in the workplace takes on added importance amid heightened political divisions.
“Especially in a workplace, where you can level the playing field and really make sure people know, ‘Hey, you’re welcome here and you’re seen here,’ that can really make a difference at a time when on a national level people feel really divided from each other,” Tubbs said.
Creating that sense of belonging requires deliberate practice. Maya Nussbaum, founder of Girls Write Now, starts each staff meeting with “heart warmers”—brief moments where employees share thoughts on simple topics like a favorite candle. She also encourages active listening to different perspectives.
“Productivity is better when people feel that they’re valued and they’re listened to and they matter,” Nussbaum said. “They’re going to work harder and they are going to care, and they’re going to channel their passion as opposed to feeling dismissed.”
Delivering honest feedback
Kindness can also mean sharing hard truths in a tactful way. Chantel Cohen, founder and CEO of CWC Coaching and Therapy in Atlanta, said providing honest feedback requires courage.
“Sometimes kindness is getting out of your comfort zone and telling someone the truth so they can shine,” Cohen said. “Kindness isn’t a conflict-free workplace. Kindness is a workplace where repair is possible or improvement is possible.”
When providing feedback, managers should give specific examples of behaviors that need improvement. But they must also acknowledge success. Karla Cen recalled a former boss who criticized her several times daily. She learned, but felt unrelenting pressure.
Her current managers take a different approach. One brought her a potted plant on her first day after driving four hours to meet her. Another provides encouraging feedback regularly.
“Having her pass by and say, ‘You did that really well today,’ it just really uplifts the mood of the whole department and makes us ready to come in for the next challenges,” Cen said.
Protecting time
Before scheduling a meeting, managers should consider whether the goals can be accomplished another way, Cohen suggested.
“Sometimes, the gift of time is such a kindness,” she said. “Maybe you can’t give your team time off right now, but what you could do a couple times a quarter is just say, ‘Hey we’re going to skip tomorrow’s meeting and here are the things I want you all to think about. Submit this in writing so that you can have the time for yourselves.’”
Keeping meetings structured and focused also frees employee time, Nussbaum said.
Reconsidering rules
Sometimes kindness means reconsidering long-standing rules. More than two decades ago, Meher Murshed and Anupa Kurian-Murshed fell in love while working at Gulf News in Dubai. They wanted to marry, but the newspaper prohibited spouses from working in the same department.
The couple feared one would have to quit if they wed. They appealed to their editor-in-chief, who raised the issue with the managing director. The top managers decided the couple could keep their jobs and marry as long as one did not report to the other.
“It changed our lives,” Meher Murshed said. “Life could have been very different.”
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