In a study published by Harvard Business Review (HBR), Facebook has been ranked the most empathetic company in the world. The recently released Global Empathy Index has published two different lists of companies: 20 companies on a “most empathetic” list and 20 on a “least empathetic” one. The list has been made by comparing 170 companies, based on an analysis of the internal culture, CEO performances, ethics, and social media presence on major financial indexes. Two million tweets between September 27 and October 16th 2016 too were analysed for this survey. “The newly released 2016 Empathy Index demonstrates, empathy, which is about understanding our emotional impact on others and making change as a result, is more important to a successful business than it has ever been, correlating to growth, productivity, and earnings per employee,” says author-activist Belinda Parmar of The Empathy Business, a London-based consultancy that publishes the survey annually. “The way we define empathy is through a company’s ethics, leadership, internal culture, brand perception, and public messaging via social media. “These are the companies that retain the best people, create environments where diverse teams thrive, and ultimately reap the greatest financial rewards,” she added. In HBR’s list of most empathetic companies, Facebook, Google Alphabet, and LinkedIn clinch the top 3 positions, while Indian firms like Bharat Petroleum, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries and ICICI Bank topped the list of least empathetic companies. Bharat Petroleum is followed by Sun Pharmaceutical Industries and ICICI Bank. Bharti Airtel is at the fifth place followed by Larsen & Toubro and Indian Oil. State Bank of India has been placed at the 11th position while Reliance Industries got the 13th position on the list. The Global Empathy Index studied global companies but a majority of them were from the U.S., UK and India. However, Chinese companies were not included in the survey due to lack of publicly available data.
