What is empathy in the workplace?
In day-to-day life, you spend half of your precious time with people in your workplace, or meetings, etc. If you are spending 40 hours per week on your work, there must be empathy and compassion in the workplace. Empathy in the workplace can build a strong relationship with your clients, peers, or respective heads.
Why is it necessary to have empathy in the workplace? Let us explore with an example. You are in a performance appraisal meeting with your manager, and you expect them to behave in a calm, kind, and attentive way as you discuss how to be a better person in your job. If you happen to see an unreceptive manager, you hesitate to approach them for your work in the future. Some employees may even resign from their jobs due to the uncooperative environment. If there is empathy in your work environment, you will definitely become an indispensable part of your team or work.
Why Empathy Is Important in the Workplace
Empathy makes communication and cooperation different and results in benefits not only for the organization itself but also for its culture:
- Better Communication: Knowing your colleagues’ background and views, you can adapt your style of communication to be more effective and respectful.
- Retention Increase: According to the research conducted among employees of the organizations which lack empathy, more than half of the respondents were ready to take less money for the job where there would be more empathy.
- Lower Levels of Burnout: If the management and the team members show empathy, they can see the signs of being overworked or stressed. It is easier to react to these signs by adjusting their workload and schedule.
- Effective Problem-Solving: By listening to different opinions and avoiding conflicts, a team can cooperate effectively and find solutions faster.
Ways to build empathy in the workplace:
- Try to listen to the other’s problems.
- Always pay attention to something that is happening near you.
- To encourage or develop good communication, always send, and receive feedback in the workplace.
- Develop a good and meaningful relationship with the peer and the managers.
- Try to help or mentor your juniors in the workplace.
Let us explore a practical example of maintaining empathy in the workplace. If you are working in a telecom service center, an old customer approaches you with an issue in his 3G network. After hearing the issue, you rectified it and learned that they accidentally changed the option by switching on airplane mode. Instead of shouting or looking down at them, you correct the issue first, fix the problem, explain to them the issue, and teach them the steps to resolve it if it happens again. In this way, you can maintain empathy in the workplace.
Fostering an Empathetic Culture
Creating a kind and understanding workplace needs purposeful effort, especially from leaders and the HR team. Companies can build this culture by:
- Turning empathy into something that can be measured and used to evaluate how well leaders are doing.
- Ensuring that empathy doesn’t mean ignoring performance management standards or holding people accountable.
- Including empathy as a key part of the company’s values and the overall direction it wants to go.