Announcing our official “Heart Launch”: A movement for corporate compassion
This first blog covers why CompassionEX exists, what services we offer, and how to become a compassionate workplace.
About the founder
Hey there friends, new and old, my name is Kevin Bowen and I’m so thankful for your time and attention. I believe people are more complex than just words on a page... but while I have you, this is me in four bullets:
My purpose is to live a life of service to others, treating people with infinite and equal worth.
I’m a systems thinker that recognizes that business lies at the intersection of economic equality, social justice, and environmental sustainability.
I seek to prioritize the inner work I’m called to do as much as my external contributions as an entrepreneur.
I believe everyone is responsible for and can make the permanent, positive change our world needs.
Why CompassionEX exists
Imagine if 51% of your customers were actively looking for a better alternative to your product or service. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace Report, that is the current experience of employees as 51% of employed workers say they are watching or actively seeking a new job. Business leaders would NEVER take such a passive approach to keeping their customers satisfied. So why haven’t we done much to improve how we all spend most of our waking hours?
The businesses of "yesterday" focused most of their efforts on improving customer satisfaction and increasing shareholder value. To become future-proof, businesses must recognize their broader purpose and Total Societal Impact. This requires business leaders to practice what they preach, giving up power, control, and greed to run an organization that allocates the organization’s time, money, and resources to meet the needs of their people, community, and planet.
CompassionEX is a People & Culture professional services firm leading the transformative potential of human-centered workplaces. We specialize in the People & Culture strategy, internal listening operations, and leadership enablement expertise leaders need to become and stay an Employer of Choice.
Our organizational mission: Improve the human condition through organizational change.
Our aspirational vision: Become the #1 source for People & Culture expertise across the Americas.
Put another way, we shift organizations from treating Humans as Resources, to operating an internal function that systematically serves internal customers with daily and milestone experiences they love. It’s a fundamental change in business philosophy that requires leaders to change from thinking, “how can I optimize my people to serve my organization’s needs?” to “how can I optimize my organization to serve my people’s needs?”
Every workplace needs compassion
Based on the dictionary definition of compassion, there are three key components of a compassionate workplace:
Awareness of the distress their people experience.
Desire to alleviate the distress quickly.
Action to make organizational change effectively.
These components of Compassion also make up the three components of our organization:
Knowledge Hub - Spreading awareness of how individuals can best choose a compassionate workplace and how leaders can best become one.
Community of Care - Increasing an organization’s desire to become a compassionate workplace by offering vetted well-being workshops to People Team professionals that improve their personal quality of life and prove the business value they’d receive from bringing the workshops into their organization.
Culture Consulting - Providing the expertise compassionate workplaces need to take action in a systemic way. Our consulting services were made to build and operate a People & Culture function responsible for identifying internal customer problems, co-creating optimal solutions, and communicating organizational change.
How to become a compassionate workplace
Remnants of the “Great Resignation” are still being felt by employers as employee expectation continue to increase in 2024. People expect organizations to meet their unique needs and it’s now up to employers to deliver on employee value propositions like:
A caring work culture & flexible life-work balance.
Competitive salary & benefits.
Opportunities for personal & professional growth.
We know that leaders love to communicate their vision for organizational culture, but it will always fall flat if no one in the organization experiences it. If business leaders want to walk the talk, they’ll need to address the following gaps in People & Culture strategy, operations, and training:
Human Resources works in a silo with undefined roles & responsibilities.
Employee sentiment isn’t treated like other business Key Performance Indicators.
There is no standard process for listening and acting on internal customer feedback.
People Leaders lack the interpersonal skills and time within their workload to care for their direct reports.
Employee-led change is not invested in, rewarded, or championed by executive leadership.
To invest in, build, and operate a cross-functional, multi-level People & Culture function that:
Gains buy-in from every level and function, communicating clear ownership of responsibilities.
Establishes a cadence for reporting on the People Experience lifecycle and employee sentiment metrics that impact the business.
Runs a monthly standard operating procedure for listening, analyzing, communicating, and acting on internal customer feedback.
Develops the interpersonal skills of leaders and non-leaders while ensuring that everyone has time within their workload to engage in People & Culture programs.
Structures and incentivizes grassroots change from the individual contributor level to empower anyone at the company to play a role in organizational culture.
We partner with clients to make all of the above happen by offering three consulting services:
People & Culture Strategy - Make your culture irresistible by delivering exceptional experiences across the People Experience Lifecycle and operating an internal employee-led function that improves organizational culture.
Internal Listening Operations - Improve your internal People processes by hiring us to listen, analyze, and report out internal customer feedback in a way that reduces bias, increases People Team capacity, and makes individuals feel safe, heard, and valued.
Leadership Enablement - Cultivate a culture of care for the entire person by empowering your people leaders with the training and resources they need to integrate well-being into the experience of every employee.
To learn more about the business benefits and what is offered within each service, please visit the above service pages.
The business value of happy, healthy people
At CompassionEX, we always emphasize the human value of our services because we understand the nature of work, irrespective of industry, is about human development and quality of life. We are also quick to prove the immense, long-term business value when business leaders invest in systems of service. Here are three business benefits:
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By placing people at the center of the organization’s system, leaders can foster a culture of well-being, drive superior employee performance, obtaining a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining top talent.
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Invest strategically in whole-person development, create psychologically safe environments, and facilitate human-centered design workshops. These initiatives not only enhance innovation but also position the organization to adapt swiftly to evolving market trends, ensuring long-term viability and relevance.
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Empower internal customers to make their voice heard when they feel called and incentivize employees that play a role in analyzing, reporting, and acting on the feedback. By enabling co-creation, leaders can more accurately identify the highest priority issues, craft better solutions, and make faster organizational change. No one knows the needs of your people better than your people.
Looking for more People data? In March of 2024 we’ll be publishing our second blog on, "The ROI of Investing in People," where we will dig into citations on six pillars of business benefits.
How we differentiate from other People & Culture firms
Like companies that brag about being “customer obsessed,” we are obsessed with creating systems that serve the organization’s Candidates, Employees, and Alumni. The modern workplace needs a blend of Go-To-Market and organizational change expertise to operate an internal function dedicated to continually improving all aspects of the People Experience lifecycle and the organization’s culture.
Here's what makes us different:
We want to create sustainable systems that make People your competitive advantage. Like your Customer Experience function, we’ll develop a cross-functional, multi-level internal Go-To-Market function to continually delight your Internal Customers. Applying GTM principles and the latest technology platforms internally, we can learn what matters most to internal customers and how to best deliver it quickly and effectively.
We empower our clients to operate autonomously once we’ve built your system. We’re a comprehensive People partner offering fractional HR services when you need it most. We believe the best way to set you up for long-term success is to have your organization’s people determine how the system can best serve them. We also value autonomy because too many firms leave value off the table just to ensure a steady flow of follow-up work. We’ll always be a call away to help but know how effective and meaningful it is for employees to be the ones making organizational change.
We’re agents of change, redefining the purpose of business to make you future-proof. We are confident in our capacity to deliver on the needs of a modern workplace because of our understanding of the past when it comes to organizational psychology, employee engagement, and the historical power imbalances between the employer-employee relationship that still exist and prevent success in most organizations today. We know the best way for us to create value for your business is to be there for the individual people within your organization.
We believe every work day can be filled with:
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Purpose
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Growth
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Well-being
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Empowerment
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Belonging
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Focus
〰️ Purpose 〰️ Growth 〰️ Well-being 〰️ Empowerment 〰️ Belonging 〰️ Focus
About our “Heart Launch.” and how you can join the movement
I was texting a mentor about my company’s “Hard Launch” when my iPhone autocorrected to “Heart Launch.” We both agreed that the correction was more fitting given I’ve been giving my heart and mind to CompassionEX since October of 2021. I’ve had an uncertain feeling when considering when to finally reveal my art, expertise, and hope for the world. I knew the website, consulting IP, and blogs would never feel fully perfect to me but also knew that my professional calling to contribute towards the movement for human dignity in the workplace could no longer wait.
While I’ve been building the company, I’m grateful for the handful of technology, insurance, and professional services companies that have already piloted my services to prove the value of systems that delight internal customers. It’s a dream to contribute towards what I’m passionate about, skilled in, and what the world needs. I'm excited to bring our culture consulting services to organizations looking to invest in the growth of their people and their business.
I know that every person can, and must, play a role in creating human-centered workplaces that work for everyone—today and for generations to come. Already convinced you want to make work suck less? Explore our website or book a call with me to get started. Please reach out on LinkedIn or in the comments below to keep the conversation going!