The Practice of Emotional Labour - Essay Example

Emotional Labour and Its Impact in the Workplace

Introduction

Globally, workplace most cultures dictate workers to show courtesy and politeness to customers, regardless of the behaviour they receive in response (Glomb & Rotundo 2004, p. 63). Consider the case below of a photo printer and his client. A customer who had received services early in the day comes back to the photo printer’s shop later in the day fire and brimstone insisting that the printer had ruined her photos; they were in black and white. The printer apologizes and offers to reprint them immediately. However, to the printer's disappointment, he discovers that the pictures were taken in black and white films and given the photo machines in his possession, he could not print coloured photos taken in black and white film. The printer politely tries to explain the situation to his customer and even suggested a photo specialty store right around the corner that would be able to help. The client would have none of the printer's explanations all this time insisting that she used coloured films. In the process, the customer got her husband, the printer's manager and supervisor involved, called the printer names and even threatened to get the corporate officer involved if her problems were not fixed.

On a further investigation, it turned out that the client was wrong as the package from which the film came from proved that indeed the photos were taken in black and white films. Instead of admitting her mistake and accepting the advice given by the printer, the client still insisted on reporting the printer to the corporate officer for not helping her.

What would have been your feelings if you were the printer dealing with such a customer? Most probably you would feel humiliated, angry, or frustrated as such reactions from a client are more likely to provoke negative emotional reactions from the one offering the services. However, given the hardworking and professional nature of the printer and the organizational expectations, the printer remained polite to the clients at all time, he stayed calm and positive throughout the exchange. If your job requires you to manage your emotions and the way you express them to meet organizational expectations, then that is called emotional labour. Such demands of emotional labour are typical of employees in the service oriented roles such as airline flight agents, counseling, nursing, coaching, tour apparatus and much more (Humphrey 2008, p. 44). What does emotional labour therefore mean?

What is Emotional Labour?

Although the practice of emotional labour is ancient, the term was created in 1993 by Arlie Hochschild to describe services offered by service providers that goes beyond physical duties. For example, when a service provider is dealing with an angry client, he or she is expected to hide his or her real emotions such as a feeling of humiliation, for example by smiling even when subjected to negative or critical feedback. The hiding of one's negative and actual attitudes is critical to customer's perception of service quality and, therefore, service provider employees who can manage their emotions effectively enhance their organisation's performance and image, and promote customer satisfaction and loyalty (Hochschild 2012, p. 39).

Emotional labour can thus be defined as the control of a service provider's behavior to display the appropriate emotions by evoking certain positive emotions and suppressing negative emotions to conform to social norms. Every job requires that employees while interacting with clients to display certain emotions (Glomb & Rotundo 2004, p. 24). The emotional display rules vary across occupational categories. For instance, police officers are expected to be calm and relaxed, bill-collectors need to be forceful and angry. On the other hand, judges are supposed to show emotional neutrality to avoid interfering with the trial outcome; nurses should display a feeling of caring and kindness while food servers should be friendly and cheerful. Emotional labour thus involves managing the employee's emotions to meet the job expectations. However, such conformity to emotion display rules, regardless of circumstances or discrepant internal feelings, is easier said than done. When the display of a particular emotion is essential to worker performance, then it becomes an emotional labour and ought to be paid for (Montgomery, Panagopolou & BenoS 2005, p. 78).

The concept of emotional labour is common in workplaces not only in describing the relationship between the workers and clients but also the relationship between employees themselves. However, the concept is not limited to the workplace but all aspects of life. It occurs in all situations where one is required to alter his or her outward behavior such as smiling, making positive eye contact, not openly expressing verbal cues and body language to conform to an ideal, something that every human does (Glomb & Rotundo 2004, p. 41). However, in this discussion, we are going to restrict ourselves to emotional labour within the confines of workplaces.

There have been significant shifts in employment over the recent past from being majorly industrial and agricultural to the service sector. The changes have resulted into increased face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions in occupations within organizations (Hochschild 2012, p. 56). Such shifts in the characteristics of employment have also brought about development and establishment of new role requirements increasingly connected with the current situation. This has led organisations and other occupational bodies to display rules that are essential in serving as standard for the appropriate expression of workplace emotions. Such modeled expected expressions of particular emotions and attitudes during work sometimes contrast with the real feelings that workers experience. Nevertheless, they have become organisational norms of work behavior that the employees have to conform to so as to be successful in different careers.

As a consequence, an employee's emotional display is no longer a private experience, but a public act that is controlled by employer’s supervision (Montgomery, Panagopolou & BenoS 2005, p. 78). Emotional display rules have been developed by the different organizations and mandatory training programs instituted requiring employees to go through periodic sessions of learning appropriate emotions such as how to smile in a sincere way and how to change own impatience or anger into public empathy and kindness (Sallaz 2013, p. 52). In that way, workers learn to suppress their true feelings and display the emotions that the organization desires. In the context of the workplace, emotional labor is a process through which workers manage their emotions in agreement with organizationally defined rules and guidelines.

Types of Emotional Labor

Deep acting and surface acting are the two types of emotional labour. The two types of emotional labour mentioned above are the processes through which employees suppress or display their emotions. Surface acting does not require the employee to feel the emotion displayed but to stimulate it merely. It involves showing a fake emotion by suppressing the real feelings (Hochschild 2012, p. 37). The worker is thus required to manage the expression of his or her emotions in such a way that the customer feels that appropriate feelings have been shown. For instance, the supervisor might be harsh to an employee. Although such an employee is expected to be angry with the supervisor's actions, he or she would still provide upbeat and positive customer services to all customers without making the customers have a clue that the employee is in a personal turmoil. The employee in this case only pretends to possess a particular emotion by exposing an unnatural and artificial smiling, body language, verbal communication or the use of soft tone of voice to show a fake emotion that they do not feel or hide the emotions that they feel (Humphrey 2008, p. 44). When an individual's feelings have to be faked (surface acting) to meet certain social or work rules, typically stress, and emotional exhaustion; increased burnout and depression will creep in and lead to job dissatisfaction as will be discussed later.

Unlike in surface acting which is a pretense, deep acting ensures that the employee's actions are aligned with their work, and hence the service provider can have less work-related stress and leads the worker to achieve greater happiness. There are many ways to which emotion can be aligned with one's occupation to improve job satisfaction. One of the ways is to recognize the value of the work that one is engaged in (Ashkanasy, Härtel & Zerbe 2012, p. 73). This will ensure that the worker gets inspiration from his or her occupation. In this method, the employee should understand the purpose of his or her job and how it fits into the society as a whole. Such knowledge will enable and give one a sense of pride to finish assignments.

The other method is to focus on the aspects of the job that one likes. One may not like everything about the occupation that they are involved in, but at least there are some few things that the worker might like (Humphrey 2008, p. 34). The employee should thus focus on those positive aspects that he or she finds enjoyable in the workplace as a means of uplifting the mood at work. Consequently, improving work related relationships by building healthy relationships with bosses, coworkers, and clients can also be imperative to emotional satisfaction. Finally, one should consider finding a job that fits his or her personality. A job that one has a zero interest in can therefore cause emotional labour that is too much to handle and may as a result cause conflict with one's core personality.

Impacts of Emotional Labour in the Workplace

Emotional labour is best viewed as a multifaceted construct which can be argued to possess both positive and adverse consequences to individuals and organisations (Ashkanasy, Härtel & Zerbe 2012, p. 37). The definition of emotional labour indicates that the practice is primarily beneficial to the employee, employer, and the organization. Emotional labour being the management of feelings by creating facial and bodily displays that are compliant with social and job requirements, suggests a uniform behavior by employees that will result in efficient fulfillment of duties and provision of high-quality services to customers (Glomb & Rotundo 2004, p. 63). Emotional labour, therefore, has an exchange of value since it is what the workers are paid work for. However, excessive identification with emotional requirements often has adverse consequences on the employees. The discussion below will thus look at both the positive and negative impacts of emotional labour in the workplace.

• Positive Impacts of Emotional Labour in the Workplace

Typically, service workers are expected to perform their duties in a particular manner if they are going to provide quality services to customers. The behavior patterns involving customer service rules such as ‘the customer is always right' and the requirements to always greet customers with a smile are usually defined and their implementation monitored by the management. Employees and organizations are not to be blamed for insisting on the emotional labour at work since almost all service industries require interaction with customers. The jobs in such a sector, therefore, require employees to be courteous and kind to clients, with little regard on how clients treat them in return, intrinsically, it is what the employers are paying for.

Emotions have thereby come to be recognized as integral to a work life. Emotional labour that an employee provides becomes the company's biggest competitive advantage (Humphrey 2008, p. 23). Accordingly, the global service sector has had a greater increment in economic share calling for new ways of creating competitive advantage necessary to deliver high-level quality service. Service provider employees are undisputedly the greatest assets in the service sector. However, the service employees need to be in such a way that they form a high-quality workforce regarding being concerned about the customers’ need. The service sector cannot be fully described by physical and sensory-motor demands only as emotional labour demands are rather important (Hochschild 2012, p. 27). The service section is thus not characterized by only intellectual and physical labour but also emotional labour concerning a sincere concern about customers.

The nature of the interaction between the customers and the service employees plays a significant role in defining the quality of services. The fact that management of emotions is relevant for workers in the service industry and that the assessment of the quality of service is always based on emotions makes the experience and displays of emotions in the sector service necessary. When customers receive excellent services, they are likely to spend more time using the service and would be more willing to return. They are also likely to recommend the services to others (Steinberg & FigarT 2009, p. 67). Service providers who are better at managing their emotions and those of customers are therefore highly valued in the service industry and are likely to be identified and given better rewards.

Emotional labour is thus beneficial to both the employer and the employee. The organisation gains the necessary workforce to enable it to obtain a competitive advantage while the worker gains rewards based on the ability to manage emotions appropriately. Nevertheless, the beneficial impacts of emotional labour are not limited to the client-employee-employer relationship but extend to the relationships between the workers themselves (employee-to-employee relationship). Henceforth, appropriate management of emotional labour can result in healthy relationships between employees (Ashkanasy, Härtel & Zerbe 2012, p. 33). For example, the organizational rules requiring people to work in teams and those that require employees to show positive team behaviours towards colleagues would lead a healthy working environment despite the emotional labour conditions that come with it.

• Negative Impacts of Emotional Labour in the Workplace

As shown in the discussions above, provision of services involves dealing with people efficiently, a condition that requires the use of emotions. However, lack of support from the management in the work in catering for the employees emotional needs can be draining, leading to emotional exhaustion and burnout for workers. One of the adverse effects of emotional labour is the feeling of un-authenticity. Authenticity and self-expression are behaviours that many people strive to achieve (Steinberg & FigarT 2009, p. 81). The feelings that display rules common with emotional labour have an obstructive effect on the genuine expression and experience of employees. When an employee is expected to display continually only those emotions that are appropriate for the job without due consideration on how they feel, they are likely to develop an emotional conflict between their real feelings and what they show to others (Humphrey 2008, p. 61).

Hiding of one's emotions on a regular basis can result in high levels of stress and at times, disconnections from close personal relationships. This is more evident when one engages in surface acting which results into a situation where the employees' emotional expression and their actual feelings being at odd with each other. The lack of authenticity and its resultant depressed mood and stress can lead to dissatisfaction at work with the quality of diminishing. In such a case, there is a high likelihood that the victim will quit their jobs (Steinberg & FigarT 2009, p. 121).

Conclusion

Excellence in service provisions is a critical driver of success in most organisations (Humphrey 2008, p. 44). Since the delivery of services involves the application of feelings, emotions at work becomes a necessary part of a company life. It is thus important for business entities to understand the impact of emotional labour and how it affects workers and come up with procedures and policies that reduce adverse impacts of emotional labour (Hochschild 2012, p. 56). With proper management, the organisation can help employees develop emotional intelligence, a tool that will enable them to have the ability to apply emotions appropriately and thereby, improving the overall performance and worker satisfaction.