Loving-Kindness is good for work. Really?

By Jovina Ang

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer – The value of loving-kindness is seldom mentioned in the workplace. But it can have enormous benefits. Researchers at SMU found that loving-kindness can increase employee motivation and cultivate a positive mental state – a panacea that every manager wants for his or her team.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers in Singapore and the world over have reported increased stress levels, and many of them are facing burnout due to a lack of separation between work and life, resulting from working from home. Prolonged levels of stress is not a good thing – it can impair performance, as well as affect motivation and the overall well-being of workers.

“Given the issue of prolonged stress, it was no surprise that employee motivation and affective mental states have taken a hit,” SMU Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources Jochen Reb told the Office of Research and Tech Transfer.He further expanded: “While mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress levels, not much research has been conducted on its effects on the affective and motivational states at work.

“Also, with compassion and empathy at the top of mind of many Fortune 500 CEOs, we wanted to incorporate loving-kindness in our research especially when we know that it can impact affective states, which in turn, can drive downstream workplace outcomes such as job performance and job satisfaction.”

While mindfulness is becoming a staple for employee development in many companies from Apple, Google, SAP to NHS (National Health Service in the United Kingdom), the same cannot be said about loving-kindness. Perhaps the principles of loving-kindness seem counterintuitive for today’s work environment that is becoming increasingly cutthroat.

However, contrary to this prevailing perception, several prominent CEOs including Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn have argued that loving-kindness can help organisations grow and employees perform better. In other words, loving-kindness might just be good for work.

Construct of Loving-Kindness

So what is loving-kindness? Unlike mindfulness which focuses on developing awareness in the present moment, loving-kindness focuses on developing feelings of goodwill, kindness and warmth toward oneself and others. And like mindfulness, loving-kindness can be developed through meditation and contemplative practice.

The practice of loving-kindness is integral to the Buddhist contemplative tradition and teaching. The term “loving-kindness” is a term that has been translated from the term metta in the Pali language.

Recently, researchers have begun to study the practice of loving-kindness in the secular context using scientific methodology. Even though the research on loving-kindness is at the nascent stage, what is interesting is that the practice of loving-kindness appears to instill a high ethical code of conduct and a high moral compass in individuals. That said, the effects of loving-kindness have yet to be examined in the workplace.

The research

To understand the effects of loving-kindness in the workplace, Professor Reb and his team of collaborators, namely, Theodore Masters-Waage, William Tov and Udana Bandara – designed a robust research programme that comprised two studies to examine the effects of loving-kindness on motivation and affective states at work.

The first study was designed like an experiment to compare and contrast the effects of loving-kindness, as well as mindfulness over a six-week period. This study was conducted in collaboration with Rakuten Institute of Technology. A total of 131 employees at Rakuten who volunteered to participate were randomly assigned to the three groups – the loving-kindness group, the mindfulness group (“active control condition”), and a passive control group.

Both the loving-kindness and the mindfulness groups were provided formal guided training in either loving-kindness or mindfulness. To reinforce the training, the participants were asked to practise what they had learned during their workday. At the end of each workday, the participants were given a two-minute survey to complete. A total of 1,787 completed daily surveys were collected over the six-week study period.

The second study was conducted with 71 students right here at SMU over a period of seven days. The primary purpose of this study was to ascertain the effects of formal (guided) versus informal (self-initiated) loving-kindness practice. Participants were randomly assigned to either a formal or an informal loving-kindness practice condition. To introduce the practice of loving-kindness, an instructor-led information session was held at the start of the study.

The formal practice group was sent an audio file that guided them in their loving-kindness practice at 8am each day whereas the informal practice group was given instructions on how to practise loving-kindness on their own during their day. At the end of the day, the participants were sent a survey to record whether they had completed their practices, as well as record their motivational and affective states on that day.

In both the studies, the practice of loving-kindness was found to increase motivation and cultivate affective states – specifically, a more positive affective state. These effects were achieved either through formal (guided) or informal (self-initiated) practice.

Benefits of Loving-Kindness

While the introduction of loving-kindness seems to be at odds with a work environment that focuses on speed and goal attainment, this new research proves otherwise. The benefits of loving-kindness are clear especially to counter the work issues that have arisen from COVID-19.

Just as how mindfulness training is becoming a staple for employee development in many organisations, Professor Reb recommends that organisations go one step further to start offering loving-kindness training.

“From this research, we show promising evidence that loving-kindness practice is an effective intervention for driving employee behaviour and employee effectiveness. If organisations promote loving-kindness, we believe job performance and job satisfaction will follow,” Professor Reb asserted. However, he cautioned: “Loving-kindness practice should not be viewed as a quick productivity enhancement tool.”

He continued, “Given that job performance and job satisfaction are critical for building a great organisation and a great place to work, organisations should consider offering loving-kindness training as an intervention to accomplish these goals.”

Back to Research@SMU Feb 2021 Issue