Expansion Kit: The Ripple Effect of Extending Empathy Beyond Business

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Hello and welcome back to the show. In this short empathy expansion kit episode, we are discussing the ripple effects of empathy beyond business. I'm Stephen Sakach here with Tullio Siragusa. Hey, Tullio.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:32)
Hello, everybody.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:33)
Good to be back. One of the things we do at our company is peer-to-peer giving. Each employee has a small monthly dollar amount they can use for internal use, and if a teammate steps up and helps them with something, they often return the favor with a thank you and gratitude for their help, and it's really become this organic driven thing that everyone enjoys doing, and every time it happens, there are notices in Slack, so you can see who is getting a shout out for what. We've also taken that concept outward, so certain frontline client folks in our staff have another giving program, where they can send a prospect, a cup of coffee or a client lunch or a vendor, something happens to their family, you can send them a gift or something like that.
So this is taking that empathy beyond our internal team and outward to the world, and in a way that's connection focused. One of our employees, Martha, said she took our peer-to-peer giving concept and applied it to her family, and this just blew minds in the office as she was describing how it worked there. What she found out was, well, first as a wife and mom was that her family was like, holy crap, mom does a lot for us, and we need to do more for her and for each other. And so this started not just with building empathy and not just a conversation on gratitude, but really a gratitude and empathy practice for the family. So now they're a little more proactive in helping each other. And if you're looking for a better way to do allowances with your kids, this is it. I was like, oh man, all my kids are grown up. I'd have to reconfigure how to do this. But yeah, it was really just kind of blown us away. And she talked about the dynamics and how that really helps things there. Anyway, what we want to get in today is taking that empathy outward from your company, how that can create ripple effects. So Tullio, this is an example of a company gratitude process, not just staying within the workplace, but spreading the love outside. There's no tangible, straightforward impact on the bottom line, is there? A company may not be getting financially richer, but our lives are richer.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:01)
There isn't a direct correlation that you can track on the impact on the bottom line. However, there is a direct impact to the bottom line. It's just common sense, right? I imagine employees getting recognized, they're happier, they feel validated, and they come back and they stay because they continue to get validated, they continue to get recognition, which is really important to job satisfaction. Happy employees usually translate to better profits, happier customer because you have this institutional knowledge that gets gathered over many years, that stays because those people don't leave. There's a certain loyalty that comes into that. So there's a lower turn rate with recognition programs like this, which has a direct correlation impact in the bottom line because when you maintain that knowledge, you have higher satisfied customers, etc. I think there's definitely an impact to the company's growth and the company's success. There's studies that have been done that an attitude of gratitude creates better successful companies. There's a direct study that shows a tie to stepping into gratitude and wealth. So there's definitely something related to that. But at the end of the day, a lot of companies, they'll do stuff like this as a corporate social responsibility initiative. But in my opinion, it's just part of being purposeful as a business. If you started something, there was something you were trying to solve or do good in the world.
With that came the exchange of money for it. So you create value, you get value in return in terms of revenues and profits.
Now, there might be some people who can't afford what you have to offer. But the desire to create that value didn't diminish, at least not for the people who started the company, right? And hopefully, that culture has maintained its excitement for fulfilling that desire in the world. So corporate social responsibility just becomes an extension of that original purpose. But now you're offering maybe less fortunate folks or you're doing your part to spread the success you're having with those who are maybe less successful. So it really, to me, it's just about being purposeful. So corporate social responsibility should really just be about extending your purpose to those who can't pay for it. That's kind of the way I look at it.