“Improving well being is not a soft add on. It is central to decent work and to organizational resilience.”
“Everybody hurts sometimes.”
This is a recurring line in REM’s iconic song of the same title released in the early 90s.
The song was intended to “reach out to people who felt they had no hope”. (Source: https://www.smoothradio.com/features/the-story-of/everybody-hurts-rem-lyrics-meaning-video/) and this brought to mind my colleagues at work who were feeling hopeless, looking for someone who was both willing to listen and offer emotional support. Realistically speaking, this was not a reality as some may be willing to lend an ear, but less likely to offer emotional support. An internal survey conducted in my organization revealed that this was a gap that could undermine workplace well-bAeing unless everyone, or at least a significant number came together willingly to take action.
The study looked at different kinds of empathy: whether people understand a colleague’s point of view and whether they actually feel and respond to a teammate’s emotions. It found that people are generally willing to try to see things from someone else’s perspective, but less likely to offer an emotional response or comfort. In short: employees will listen, but often stop short of giving the kind of emotional support that would potentially help people recover from stress.
Although the sample was small, responses were consistent across ranks – supervisors and rank and file staff reported similar experiences. This uniformity suggests the issue is systemic rather than confined to within a few teams. The result is a workplace where conversations can feel safe in form but hollow in effect: problems are understood intellectually but not always met with the human warmth that eases strain.
This matters because emotional support at work is closely tied to mental health. When people feel heard and cared for, they are more likely to speak up about stress, seek help early, and recover more quickly.
But the modern workday: back to back meetings, tight deadlines and remote routines, squeezes out the informal moments where colleagues check in on one another. Without deliberate changes, early signs of burnout can go unnoticed until they become crises.
Given this, leaders have a clear role to play. Practical steps that can make a difference include:
• Creating safe spaces for conversation. Schedule short, regular check ins and peer circles where privacy is respected and confidentiality is clear. Make these routines part of the workweek so they aren’t treated as optional extras.
• Teaching emotional skills, not just procedures. Training should go beyond problem solving to include naming emotions, offering presence, and asking whether someone wants advice or simply to be heard.
• Modelling openness. When leaders share manageable struggles appropriately, they reduce stigma and make it easier for others to ask for help.
• Tackling workload and meeting culture. Capping meeting hours, clarifying priorities and reviewing workloads reduce chronic overload, a major driver of stress.
• Measuring what matters. Track self reported stress and recovery alongside productivity so well being becomes a visible organizational priority.
Individuals can also take small, practical steps to make conversations easier. Asking permission to talk (“Do you have a minute?”), naming specific observations (“You seem quieter than usual”), offering presence rather than immediate fixes, and sharing brief, relatable disclosures all lower the barrier to opening up. Peer support networks and clear referral paths to trained resources provide a safety net when conversations reveal deeper needs.
The findings echo a broader idea about work and well being: jobs can help people grow and find meaning, but only when workplaces meet basic human needs for connection and support. When organizations treat empathy as a management discipline – something to be trained, measured and governed – they reduce psychosocial risk and create conditions where people can recover and thrive.
For my agency, the immediate task is to turn willingness into capacity: to move from “we will listen” to “we will comfort.” That requires embedding empathy into routines, policies and performance measures rather than relying on goodwill alone. Pilot programs that combine simple analytics of employee feedback with human led listening sessions can identify hotspots; short experiments with clear health metrics will show what works and where to scale.
Improving well being is not a soft add on. It is central to decent work and to organizational resilience. When leaders and colleagues do the harder work of responding emotionally as well as intellectually, workplaces become places where people can truly recover and do their best work.
“Take comfort in your friends… Everybody hurts”
Ronald Corpuz currently serves as the Executive Director III of the Philippine Racing Commission, the government body responsible for overseeing horse racing in the Philippines. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Business Administration at De La Salle University (DLSU), where he also completed his Master of Business Administration. He can be contacted at ronald_a_corpuz@dlsu.edu.ph.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of De La Salle University, its faculty, or administration.
