KKR Brings Empathy Training to Industry That Once Ignored It

In 2011, KKR & Co. bought an industrial company in Minnesota and did something unusual for a private equity firm—it invited factory workers to share ownership. A key plant with a major morale problem was losing employees and had a sky-high accident rate. Giving workers an equity stake, the thinking went, would increase loyalty, engagement and performance.

The results were promising enough that KKR began issuing equity stakes to workers at other companies it owned, at first mainly in the manufacturing sector, where annual turnover rates are routinely above 40%. KKR, which manages $600 billion in assets firmwide, is ...