Empathy and Social Purpose Have a Special Place in Financial Decision-Making [SUBSCRIBERS-ONLY]

Should nonprofit organizations make room for social justice, empathy, and compassion in the workplace? The answer is an absolute yes. Can financial decision-making benefit from a workplace culture that includes “social purposing”? Again, the answer is yes if you can link operational planning and allocation of financial resources with a broader set of perspectives that can surface from active “job purposing.”

The workplace occupies a large portion of our daily lives. We cannot and should not turn off our feelings of empathy and promoting social justice when working. What we can do is help our senior management and staff to promote social purpose by establishing a work culture that includes job purposing. In the Harvard Business Review article titled “Why Your Values Belong at Work” (January 21, 2021), Bea Boccalandro defines job purposing as “adjusting how we work so that we engage in social purpose, or a meaningful contribution to a societal cause, during the work week.”

There is an opportunity to increase staff engagement through job purposing. Encouraging staff to share new job purposing ideas is another entry point to active engagement. Financial planning, analysis and modeling will benefit from expanded input and new perspectives stimulated by job purposing.