Empathy not a soft skill, it is survival tool says global expert Mimi Nicklin at CIPM National HR Conference 2025

IN a keynote address that felt less like a lecture and more like an urgent intervention, global empathy expert and leadership strategist Mimi Nicklin on 4 June challenged a room full of Sri Lanka's most influential leaders to fundamentally rethink their approach to business, leadership, and national recovery.

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Her message, delivered to a packed hall of professionals, executives, and changemakers in the field of human resources at the National HR Conference 2025 organised by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management Sri Lanka (CIPM) at Monarch Imperial, was both simple and profound: stop treating empathy as a discretionary soft skill and start wielding it as a strategic necessity for growth.

"Empathy is not soft. It is not sentimental. It's science. And in the world we live in today, it's survival," she declared, her voice resonating with conviction. Nicklin, the internationally bestselling author of Softening the Edge and a globally recognised voice for workplace well-being, argued that many of Sri Lanka's most pressing challenges from productivity slumps to talent drain-are symptoms of a deeper, more pervasive issue: a critical and growing "empathy deficit."

The staggering cost of a disconnected workforce

To ground her argument in stark reality, Nicklin presented a sobering diagnosis of the nation's human capital, drawing from the latest Gallup data.

"The numbers are not just concerning; they are a call to action," she asserted. "Only 10% of Sri Lankans report that they are thriving. A staggering 75% of employees are actively disengaged at work. This isn't a minor human resources issue to be delegated away-it is a national productivity and innovation crisis."

She urged the audience to look beyond the percentages and consider the human reality behind them. At the heart of this widespread disengagement, she explained, is a silent epidemic of loneliness. "We have to understand that loneliness isn't the physical absence of people-it's the emotional absence of connection," Nicklin stated. "It's the feeling of being unseen and unheard in a crowded office or a bustling city."