The Limeade Institute just released a new whitepaper entitled “The Science of Care,” uncovering the business impact of showing employees their company authentically cares about them as individuals.

It also provides an introductory framework for operationalizing the organizational support required for companies to deliver care.

“The modern workplace demands an intentional shift from one that prioritizes the needs of employers to one that prioritizes the needs of employees,” said Dr. Laura Hamill, Limeade Chief People Officer and Chief Science Officer. “In order to do so, companies must take a ‘whole-person’ approach to managing the employee experience – from well-being to diversity and inclusion to employee engagement and other programs that make employees feel cared for both as organizational members and humans.”

The whitepaper revealed a connection between perceptions of care and people results that are critical to compete in today’s talent war. Specifically, the whitepaper reveals that when employees feel cared for:

• 60% plan to stay at their company for three or more years (as opposed to only 7% of those who don’t feel cared for)
• 95% say they feel included in their organization (compared to 14% of those who don’t feel cared for)
• 90% say they’re likely to recommend their organization as a great place to work (compared to 9% of those who don’t feel cared for)

The Limeade Institute recognizes “care” as the provision of what’s necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance and protection of something. It’s looking after and providing for the needs of someone or something.

“Care is about those day-to-day human interactions. It’s about being flexible and understanding when an employee needs to leave work early to pick up a sick child or fostering positive manager-employee interactions over a cup of coffee,” said Dr. Hamill. “While things like margarita Mondays and pet insurance are nice-to-have perks, we believe showing employees care through organizational support is the ultimate foundation for the employee experience.”

To help employers take action, the Limeade Institute developed a framework to help organizations demonstrate care to their employees. These aspects of care can be introduced at scale to employees with the Limeade ONE platform.

“The Science of Care” whitepaper was developed by Kelly M. Hamilton, M.S., Reetu Sandhu, PhD and Laura Hamill, PhD from the Limeade Institute, exploring existing academic literature on organizational care, in addition to providing new Institute research on the concept of organizational care. This research shows that perceptions of care are related to engagement, well-being, inclusion, intention to stay and recommending the company as a great place to work.

To read the full Science of Care Whitepaper click here. To explore the elements of care framework in more detail, click here.