Benefits of Using Empathy in the Workplace (Essay Sample)

DISCUSS THE IMPORTANCE AND BENEFITS OF USING EMPATHY IN THE WORKPLACE
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Introduction
Empathy is the possession of social and emotional skill that help human feel and understand the emotion, situations, intents, opinions, and desires of others, in a way that can create a sensitive, understanding and proper ways of communication and support. This remarkable skill reflects an individual's ability to associate with others and to relate well to each other which is a necessary skill in developing and managing strong relationships. Without the capability to comprehend what others are going through, relationships remain shallow and without the profundity and richness that transpires when we have an emotional connection. Smart Business Magazine (2012) positions that empathy portrays a profound respect among employees and show that others are cared for in a workplace. A leader who is empathic makes employees have the sense of being in a team that increases productivity, morale and allegiance.
Importance of empathy in workplace
A workplace without empathy makes employees work and associate with each other without putting into consideration how other staffs feel or what they may be thinking. Each individual have very different perspectives. We all have experiences of moods, discomfort and upset, happiness and sadness. This makes us very limited when we only perceive our perspectives. Without taking an effort to assess others, it is much easy to create assumption and jump to uninformed and inconsiderate conclusions. This will often result in misinterpretation, bad feelings, loss of morale and conflict.
Miyashiro (2011) presents an easy approach to understanding that organization success is dependent on emotional factors much as on intellectual ones. Engagement of staff in the workplace has proved to influence the performance of an organization viable terms. Engagement can be defined as ‘commitment ‘to the business or organization and its values, Engagement integrates three dimensions: emotional engagement, intellectual as well as social engagement. This submits that how staffs feel about their workplace influences their level of engagement. Certainly, where staffs are well engaged their emotional engagement is much higher than either of their intellectual or social engagement. Empathy is among the skills that enable managers to engage employees and take emotion on board to effectively work with others.
With resilient empathic skills employees can get to know each other very intensely in a seemingly magical period. Empathy helps to create a healthy relationship, better workplace and a healthy society. As most workplace becomes more multicultural, the alarming effects of individuals becoming deliberately less empathic about others can be seen clearly, whoever that others may be, religious intolerance ,racism, homophobia , sexism , each result directly to desolation and injustice. Being Empathy for the seeming others is the magical skills that can enable us learn to live and work more peacefully with individuals who are nothing at all like we are (MCLAREN, 2013).
Benefits of empathy in the workplace
The ultimate value of empathy comes from not only understanding the other person’s emotional feeling but also what an individual does as a result of this.
Empathy connects employees together
When you empathize with another person, a sense of identity is created and connection with the other. As a result, one feels greater in some way and less lonely. In a therapeutic state, having someone else connect and understand with your emotions can be a great and blessed relief, as individuals with emotional glitches often feel very much lonely in their different-ness from other individuals. With empathy, the non-judgmental value can also be welcomed and well appreciated resulting to an ease of communication methods and expression of opinion and creative ideas without fear of being judged.
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