Kindness is easier to practice with your friends than at work. When you’re with your friends, you choose to be—they’re your chosen family. But when you’re with your coworkers, you don’t have control of their personality and quirks. You’ll often run up against people that you just don’t click with when you’re at work. However, no matter their personality, it’s important to still show kindness.

Kindness at the workplace is tied to happiness at work, and has many benefits. Just like you show kindness to friends, you should show kindness in the office as well. Here are just some of the benefits:

1. Higher employee retention and satisfaction

Kindness creates a more positive workplace and a welcoming atmosphere in the office. With this kind of energy, your employee satisfaction will likely be much higher than with a more negative environment. And with your employees satisfied, you’ll have higher employee retention. Kindness is linked with integrity in the workplace, and you want your employees to feel they can trust you and their coworkers.

2. Improve mental healthiness

It’s no secret that if you’re unhappy at work, your mental health can suffer. We spend so much of our time at work that if we feel like we’re being treated in an unkind way, it’s more likely that we could be depressed. People being unkind can cause a lot of work stress. When you have a kind work environment and emphasize the importance of coworkers treating each other with kindness and respect, you can avoid unhappiness in your workplace. When you perpetuate kindness, you perpetuate a state of mental healthiness.

3. Better productivity and motivation

When people feel they are being treated with kindness and respect, they’ll be more confident and productive in the workplace. When people feel good, they feel like they can take on bigger responsibility; if you feel like you can do a good job, you’re more likely to actually do a good job! Without the worry of how people are treating you, or people’s negative reactions, you can feel more motivated to get work done and to do your best.

4. More collaborative teamwork

A team that gets along also works well together. Collaboration is possible with a foundation of confidence and respect. It is said that positive emotions are more productive than negative ones. If your work environment is hostile or has a toxic level of competition, it might turn out that the ideas that prevail are not the best, but simply those spoken the loudest.

5. Heightened creativity

The creative process is strenuous task for the mind. It requires full concentration in order to yield the most fruitful results. A mind that’s poisoned by negative emotions is hampered in terms of its creative energy. When you’re able to have a mind cleared by kindness, it can then be filled with new ideas.

6. Stronger relationships with clients

Of course, being kind to clients is crucial. Rudeness toward clients should not be tolerated. If you receive a negative reaction or attitude from a client, it’s important to remember that you should not be a mirror for that negativity. Instead, channel kindness and understanding. When you can place a strong emphasis on kindness and patience at work, you’re more likely to receive the same attitude in return. When clients interact with a kind person, they won’t just like you more, but they’ll also remember you and likely return for repeat business.

Kindness is one of the most important aspects of professional life, but it’s also one of the least talked about. Although it can be assumed that kindness could be a given standard for anyone, that’s not always the case. Especially at work, where people may have clashing personalities and face high-stress situations, it can be difficult to keep kindness in the forefront of your mind. However, having a kind work environment reaps many benefits for the office.