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Empathetic leadership boosts engagement

Empathetic leadership could be the secret to boosting greater employee engagement, says the ‘EY?Empathy in Business Survey.’ It found 89% of respondents agreeing that leading with empathy helps to increase job satisfaction.?"While physical health and safety is at the centre of many conversations, the narrative needs to evolve to be more inclusive of psychological wellbeing," says?Andrea Wolfson, EY Canada people advisory services partner. "This is especially important in a tight talent market where workers want to feel their needs ? both personal and professional ? are being listened to, understood, and accommodated by their leadership." There are also tangible business benefits, with more than three-quarters of respondents indicating that they are increasingly productive, efficient, and creative when mutual empathy is present. The survey also finds that 87% of employees believe that leaders who practice genuine empathy can positively influence employees' mental health and overall wellbeing and 88% say empathy is essential to fostering a more inclusive workplace environment.

ESG return benefit unclear

Portfolios that stress environmental, social, and governance (ESG) precepts do not fare significantly better or worse than non-ESG investments, if both are weighted by market capitalization, which is the standard practice in finance, says Research Affiliates, an asset manager and research firm. A?report by Brent Ledbetter, head of equity solution distribution, and Ari Polychronopoulos, head of product management and ESG, looks at the Russell 1000 Index (which ranks stocks by market cap) with the six largest ESG exchange-traded funds, which also are cap-weighted. Over the past four years, the ETFs and the index all tracked each other closely. Part of that may be because the ESG funds and the Russell 1000 all hold the same stocks in their top 10, with Big Tech a common theme. “The comparison of these five largest ESG investment vehicles to a non-ESG cap-weighted benchmark reveals essentially no differences among the portfolios because the five products each weight their holdings by market capitalization,” the report stated,” it says.?The authors argue that investors can score better performances than the index by avoiding cap-weighting and employing fundamental factors: price to sales, price to cash flow, price to earnings, price to book, and price to dividends. Using these approaches for ESG investments makes the resulting portfolio cheaper and, for the most part, it delivers better returns than the cap-weighted?Russell 1000?Index.

For details on these stories, visit www.bpmmagazine.com

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