Impact of Providing Compassion on Job Performance and Mental Health

Purpose: To examine the relationships of providing compassion at work with job performance and mental health, as well as to identify the role of interpersonal relationship quality in moderating these relationships. Design and Methods: This study adopted a two-stage survey completed by 235 registered nurses employed by hospitals in Taiwan. All hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analyses. Findings: The results show that providing compassion is an effective predictor of job performance and mental health, whereas interpersonal relationship quality can moderate the relationships of providing compassion with job performance and mental health. Conclusions: When nurses are frequently willing to listen, understand, and help their suffering colleagues, the enhancement engendered by providing compassion can improve the provider's job performance and mental health. Creating high-quality relationships in the workplace can strengthen the positive benefits of providing compassion. Clinical Relevance: Motivating employees to spontaneously exhibit compassion is crucial to an organization. Hospitals can establish value systems, belief systems, and cultural systems that support a compassionate response to suffering. In addition, nurses can internalize altruistic belief systems into their own personal value systems through a long process of socialization in the workplace.