HumanKindex: Leaders and Employees Value Kindness at Work

In a time of rapid transformation and uncertainty, new research from Dexian’s  2025 HumanKindex report reveals a dual reality inside U.S. workplaces. Leaders and employees are more aligned than ever on the importance of kindness, empathy, and purpose, and both groups report that kindness is increasing after dipping last year. At the same time, the report shows that the gap between leaders and employees on whether organizations are making consistent progress continues to widen, signaling a disconnect between leadership intention and everyday employee experience.  

This article was originally written and first published by HRO Today; shared here for informational purposes only, with full credit to the source.

The results of the report reflect a workplace culture in transition: kindness is viewed as a strategic priority now more than ever, but its implementation is not yet perceived equally across the workforce. 

Key findings include the following. 

• Kindness is back up at the top of the organizational value list. This year, 87% of employees and 94% of executives say kindness is a core organizational value, marking a strong rebound from last year’s decline.  
• Employee expectations for kind leadership have surged. Workers are weighing kindness more heavily in their job decisions than ever before, with 87% saying kind leadership is more important than ever when choosing a job, and 91% saying a culture of kindness is essential to building a high-performance workforce.  
• Kindness is directly tied to business outcomes. Employees overwhelmingly link kindness to performance (85%), productivity (84%), engagement (82%), and collaboration (81%). Leaders strongly agree, connecting kindness to engagement (93%), productivity and collaboration (92%), and recruitment effectiveness (88%).  
• A widening perception gap exists between leaders and employees. Almost three-quarters (74%) of executives say their organizations embraced kindness “significantly more” in the past year, but only 53% of employees agree. The report raw index scores reflect this divide, with employers’ scoring rising from 71.2 in 2024 to 75.0 in 2025 and employees’ scoring from 60 in 2024 to 63.5 in 2025. Progress is happening, but employees are not feeling it at the same pace leaders believe they are delivering it. 

“This year’s HumanKindex shows that kindness is not in question. Employees and leaders are aligned on its value and impact on performance, productivity, engagement, and talent attraction,” says Maruf Ahmed, CEO of Dexian. “The challenge is that they are experiencing progress at very different rates. Leaders see significant improvement, while many employees do not feel that progress as consistently as they want to. Closing the gap means making kindness a lived experience at every level of the organization, where it can become a powerful driver of innovation, loyalty, and long-term performance.”