Emotional Labor

April 17 2024 TalktoAngel 0 comments 687 Views

Does your employment demand you to control your emotions or how you express them to conform to corporate standards? If so, it's known as "emotional labour." Individuals who work in customer-facing positions, such as hotel staff, airline flight attendants, tour guides, coaches, therapists, and online counsellors, frequently have to put in emotional labor. It may be a company policy that prohibits staff from hitting back against rude customers, the expectation of one's spouse that the other will take care of household duties and other practical matters, or the interest of a friend who wants to know why one's behavior is troubling. Unpaid and sometimes invisible work that is required of a person to keep others happy is known as emotional labour.

Origin of the term “emotional labor”

In his 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Arlie Hochschild coined this phrase. Hochschild described emotional labour at the time as an entire workplace issue. Since then, the term "emotional labor" has spread throughout our society to refer to the unpaid, frequently unseen labor that is done by the person to suppress the needs or demands of others on the job, in social circumstances, and personal settings as well. Emotional labour and "emotion work," a term for the social tasks people carry out to please others, are sometimes confused and used interchangeably. In a 1979 essay, Hochschild first used the term "emotion work."

Although emotion work and emotional labour were intended to be used in different contexts, in recent years, the terms have been used interchangeably. After the publication of Gemma Hartley's book Fed Up Women, Emotional Labor, and the Way Ahead in 2018, the definition of "emotional labor" expanded to include obligations outside of the workplace.

Effects of Emotional Labor on Employees

When you perform emotional work, you suppress your emotions to meet the demands and objectives of your company or organization. In real terms, this implies that you either.

(a) Express just your positive emotions,

(b) Keep your negative emotions hidden, or

People typically choose one of the following actions to deal with unpleasant emotions:

Express emotions they don't feel.

Avoid feeling the emotions they do.

Create the right emotion for the circumstance.

Two methods of emotional labour can be used to achieve this:

Surface acting: Surface acting is when you use false and fake verbal and body language that makes you feel something. You can hide emotion that you do feel or display emotion that you don't feel by smiling and speaking in a gentle voice.

Deep acting: By manipulating your internal feelings, you can make people think that you are truly joyful and grateful for the relationship with the other person. You convince yourself that you're not experiencing an adverse reaction so that you won't feel like you're acting.

It can frequently result in emotional conflict between your true feelings and those you display to others when you are constantly required to present only those emotions that are appropriate for the work. According to some studies, such emotional conflict makes people more likely to experience burnout and emotional exhaustion at work. They also argue that regularly suppressing your feelings increases stress levels and can even cause you to pull apart from close relationships. Other research, however, has not discovered a link between emotional conflict and emotional fatigue.

What Emotional Labor Looks Like

Many situations can lead to emotional labour showing up. The list below includes the most typical ones.

Workplace

In the workplace, emotional labour takes the form of policies and procedures that are put in place to keep consumers happy. They emphasized the need for workers to control their emotions and abstain from expressing them to others. To manage workplace stress consult the best psychologist in India or search to find the "best psychologist near me". Some examples of emotional labour in the workplace are given below:

The demand that personnel always smile at clients

Avoiding reactions from customers who behave impolitely or improperly toward employees

If an employee reacts after receiving unethical or inappropriate treatment, they will be punished.

Relationships

Emotional labour may manifest itself in less direct ways when it occurs in private situations, such as while spending time with loved ones. People are frequently required to perform emotional work in private settings in the following ways:

In a relationship, just one person is expected to handle all household chores.

The couple's child or children's needs should be met by just one individual, including daycares.

It is expected that one person will start conversations, whether they be about delicate subjects or practical matters. Seek help from the best counseling psychologists or relationship counsellor.

Social networks

You might be familiar with the phrase "emotional labor" if you spend any time on social media. One person's demands by another are frequently answered with a statement of emotional work in group discussions, in comments sections, or elsewhere on both private and public profiles. Here are a few illustrations:

When someone is accused of being sexist or racist, they demand that the accuser provide them with a single example of the allegation.

A person will ask others to explain a subject to them if they desire additional knowledge on it.

Even after explanations are made, the individual maintains that their actions were justified and wants the people they harmed to confirm their claims.

When employees are paid to manage and control their emotions, this is known as emotional labor. This has typically been observed in service-related professions. Nonetheless, the majority of companies now place a high priority on customer service, therefore emotional labor is a factor in practically every workplace. You must understand the effects of emotional labor and how they affect employees. Workplace emotions play a significant role in people management. Develop policies and processes to lessen the harmful effects of emotional labor and help people understand their responses to it. These are methods to raise employee satisfaction and overall performance.

Contribution: Dr (Prof) R K Suri, Clinical Psychologist, life coach & mentor TalktoAngel & Dr Sakshi Kochhar Psychologist