Development Monthly | #43 May 2025 | Connection and Compassion: Rethinking Relationships in HE
“In recent years, the higher education landscape has been marked by rising complexities, shifting expectations, and a palpable increase in the emotional and psychological weight carried by students and staff alike. Against this backdrop, the way we communicate has never been more important or more powerful.”
At the heart of a thriving academic community lies the quality of our interactions: the tone of an email, the empathy in a policy decision, the responsiveness of a professional service. These seemingly small moments of connection or disconnection build the culture in which students learn, and staff work. That is why the Academic Registrars’ Council (ARC) is proud to lead the sector in launching a new and vital initiative: Compassionate Communications in Higher Education.
This initiative is more than just a well-meaning aspiration. It is a call to action: to reimagine how we engage with one another, to embed kindness into our processes, and to ensure that the humanity of our students and colleagues is not lost in the administrative, academic, or structural pressures of university life.
Why Compassionate Communication Matters Now
Higher education is a space of immense potential, but also of profound pressure. Students are navigating increasingly complex challenges: academic workloads, mental health struggles, financial insecurity, and often the broader existential question of “what comes next?” For staff, too, the demands have intensified: juggling policy changes, regulatory frameworks, and student expectations while maintaining their own wellbeing and sense of professional purpose.
In such an environment, the way we communicate can either be a burden. A simple, timely, empathetic message can make the difference between a student feeling supported and seen or alienated and overwhelmed. An understanding conversation with a colleague can turn a moment of crisis into a step toward resilience.
Compassionate communication acknowledges that context. It’s not just about saying the right thing, it’s about creating a culture where kindness is the norm, not the exception.
A Framework Rooted in Values
At ARC, we recognise that meaningful change requires more than sentiment. That’s why we’ve developed a structured framework, built on five core commitments that translate the idea of compassionate communication into tangible, actionable principles:
A Culture of Kindness
This is the foundation. We commit to fostering kindness in everything we do from student-facing policies and processes to our day-to-day conversations. Kindness isn’t a weakness; it’s a strength that builds trust, reduces anxiety, and strengthens community. It means designing systems that consider emotional as well as administrative impacts.
Mindful Communications
We strive for clarity, empathy, and action. Mindful communication is intentional it ensures that the messages we send are not only accurate but supportive. It’s about being clear without being cold, and honest without being harsh. Every message is an opportunity to build rapport rather than reinforce bureaucracy.
Timely Communications
Timing matters. A delayed response in a moment of crisis can deepen distress, while proactive, well-timed messages can prevent issues from escalating. We commit to thinking carefully about when and how we communicate, ensuring students and staff receive the support they need when they need it.
Inclusivity
Compassion must be equitable. We actively work to identify and dismantle barriers to engagement in our communications, recognising that different students and staff experience policies and processes in different ways. Language, accessibility, cultural awareness, all these matter in creating truly inclusive and compassionate communications.
Reflection and Continuous Improvement
Compassion is not a fixed state; it evolves through listening and learning. We commit to regularly reviewing our approaches, asking ourselves what’s working, what isn’t, and how we can do better. This iterative process ensures that compassion isn’t a one-off campaign, but a sustained and sustainable way of working.
From Paper to Practice: Making It Real
One of the great risks in institutional life is that good ideas end up as shelf documents, worthy but unused. ARC is determined to ensure this initiative is a living, breathing part of how universities function.
To that end, we want to work with and support universities to develop institutional roadmaps that will support universities in embedding these principles into their policies, practices, and cultures. These are not one-size-fits-all; they are co-created with institutions, tailored to context, and designed to be iterative.
ARC is also building a repository of practical resources, offering tools, case studies, and communication templates that help turn principles into practice. Whether it’s crafting a sensitive email in response to a student concern, handling a disciplinary process with empathy, or training staff in active listening, these resources will offer hands-on guidance.
Crucially, we’re not doing this alone. We are working with partners across the sector to embed compassionate communication into staff development, student services, academic governance, and beyond. This is a collective endeavour.
Leadership with Compassion: The Role of Professionals and Educators
Those of us in professional services roles, Registrars, administrators, student support teams often find ourselves on the front line of communication. We are the first point of contact for a struggling student, the interpreters of policy, the implementers of complex decisions. Our words matter.
And so do those of our academic colleagues. The lecturer offering feedback, the tutor responding to a missed deadline, the head of department explaining a policy change these interactions shape the student experience as profoundly as any curriculum.
That’s why this initiative is not aimed at one part of the university, but at all of us. Leadership here is not about hierarchy it’s about influence. And every one of us has the power to shape a more compassionate environment.
The Power of Listening
If there is one principle that underpins everything in this framework, it is active listening. Too often, in fast-paced environments, listening becomes transactional geared toward solving a problem or issuing a reply. But compassionate communication invites us to listen to understand, not just to respond. It asks us to slow down, to be present, to really hear the emotion behind the words.
In doing so, we validate people’s experiences. We create the conditions for honesty, vulnerability, and growth. And we lay the groundwork for trust a precious commodity in any organisation.
What Next? A Collective Responsibility
Launching this initiative is just the beginning. What comes next is even more important: embedding, living, and leading these principles every day. In our first round of implementation discussions, we’ve been asking universities to reflect on three questions:
What have you already done?
Many institutions already practice compassion in meaningful ways whether through wellbeing initiatives, inclusive policies, or responsive communications. We want to celebrate and build on this.
What are you working on?
This is about identifying current challenges, projects, or opportunities that could benefit from the compassionate communications lens.
What would you like to do?
Here lies the visioning work. We encourage institutions to be bold, to imagine what a truly compassionate communication culture could look like and to work with us to make it happen.
Final Reflections: Words That Uplift, Not Overwhelm
As I said at the launch at the ARC Annual Conference in Leeds November 2024: “The way we communicate can either uplift or isolate those around us.” That single sentence captures what’s at stake.
We are not just sending emails or drafting policies we are shaping the emotional architecture of our institutions. Every message, every interaction, is an opportunity to reinforce dignity, foster connection, and build resilience.
Compassionate communication is not a “nice to have” it is a strategic imperative. It is how we retain students, engage staff, and navigate crises. It is how we respond to the complexity of the modern university with clarity, courage, and care.
And ultimately, it is how we honour the humanity at the heart of higher education.
Let us move forward together, with compassion.
As we navigate the complexities of modern higher education, choosing to lead with empathy isn’t just admirable—it’s essential. Now is the time to reflect on your communication style, engage your colleagues in open dialogue, and champion compassionate leadership in your institution.
Take the next step, commit to fostering a culture of empathy, one conversation at a time – email consulting@ahep.ac.uk, or if you would like to have a conversation, call 0161 528 0531.
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