Jain Sonali Suranse Sonali Suranse Upasana Gupta Upasana Gupta NEXT POST LIFESTYLE Can there be Empathy in the Workplace? Hema Iyer Hema Iyer DhyaniMani MAR , , : IST “My company has given me months’ notice and has asked me to leave”, my friend one day called me frantically. She was in tears as she spoke to me. I maintained my composure and asked her “Are you getting any severance pay from your company?”. “No”, she said with a lot of anger. We had a long conversation on how the events unfolded and how it reached this point that the company had to let her go. I then said to her, “I am sure your HR and reporting manager will be standing by you in these tough times”. She again replied in the negative. I was shocked. I didn’t know how to react to this. I had so many emotions going through me – anger, frustration, despair, helplessness, disappointment. And this brought whatsapp mobile number list me to an important question: Is it possible to be empathetic in the Workplace? Are employees only considered as assets as long as they are contributing and when they quit, they don’t deserve to be treated with respect and dignity? What is Empathy? Let’s first try to understand this term. This term is used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally define Empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. I think it suffices to say that it’s like putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and trying to understand what they might be going through. We should not confuse this with Sympathy. It is definitely not Sympathy. Sympathy is when you feel pity for someone.