Is empathy important in the workplace? Is it a skill that can be learned?

I feel like it’s purported to be more important than it is, depending on the job, of course.

In your normal day, how often should you concern yourself more with someone’s emotional health, rather than be focused on your job? We aren’t paid to be empathetic, we are paid for our skill in our actual duties.

Frankly I’m a big fan of ‘leave your personal issues at the front door’.
Yes, it can be learned, God knows I’ve had plenty of practice with ‘feels’.

I think it is very important. My family owned an insurance agency and have had employees that worked for them from grauating high school into their 50s and 60s. Part of the reason was that as employers my parents were very sympathetic to personal problems their employees were experiencing and helped them out when need be.

I think empathy is an important trait. Not everyone is “in touch ” with their feelings. Not sure how important it is in workplace.

Yes its important everywhere.

Odd but I noticed that its more pronounced when one experiences first hand pain and

suffering that they can THEN understand an others pain more easily and thus be more

compassionate towards others easily.

Can it be learned..yes.

Can it be felt , no unless one experienced a relative or family situation like that where they

LEARN to be more compassionate and gain much understanding of the human condition of

caring for one another.

I think empathy is always important everywhere. Employers who have no empathy eventually wind up with employees quitting, picketing, unionizing, and/or being apathetic towards the company. Worst case scenario you can push employees to their tipping points and very bad things can happen.

It can be taught, and also it can be faked by putting rules into the company or regulations to protect workers. It’s not really faked, because a worker knows when management feel forced to follow rules rather than having their hearts in it, but it still helps to protect the workers.