Enormity of Emotional Labour and its Significance in the ... - Icmis.net

International Conference on Technology and Business Management March 18-20, 2013
the emotional labor strategy of surface acting led to increases in subsequent strain, while deep acting led to
increase in job performance. Inhibition of emotions leads to various illness including high blood pressure, heart
disease and cancer. The practice of emotional labor in an unsupportive work environment produces work-related
stress, which has a wide range of potentially serious health effects. Faking emotions or surface acting always
leads to burnout. Providing friendly service to customer may be taxing to employee’s health. Emotional
dissonance always leads to stress, turnover ,absenteeism, and low morale .
It has been understood that how multifaceted and important are the emotional dimensions of caring were to
issues such as staff retention, job satisfaction, patient satisfaction, professional development and service delivery
(Mazhindu 2003). So, it is becoming increasingly clear that successful management of emotional labor by
employees plays a critical role in the process of customer retention, recovery, and delight.
8. Conclusion
Emotional labour is an intrinsic part of managing, teaching researching and nursing. Our emotions make us
human, and this affects our learning experiences and the experience of our service users. Ensuring support
through the tough times as well as the good times is one way to ensure the young generation remember how to
become good managers, researchers, teachers, and nurses in the future..
Emotional labor is a subtle but serious occupational hazard that is likely to spread rapidly as the global service
economy continues to grow. Emotional labor requires more than just acting friendly and being helpful to
customers; the worker must manage his or her emotions to create a company-dictated experience for customers.
The product of emotional labour is often a change in the state of mind or feeling within another person, most
often a client or a customer. First, increased emotional labour is associated with higher levels of workplace
stress (Adkins and Lury, 1999), with its associated negative impacts on employee health and well-being.To
prevent emotional exhaustion of service employees the development of interventions to promote healthbeneficial
emotional labor is necessary. This can be achieved by fostering deep acting, which reduces emotional
exhaustion over longer periods of time. Emotional labour which involves deep acting is rather like method
acting. We make a conscious effort to help annoying users because avoiding the negative feelings is good for us
and we remain in a better emotional state. Problems in service encounters may arise from faulty communication
or biased interpretation of each others behaviour. Questioning our thinking concerning a service relationship or
situation will lead to a reappraisal of the situation and will ease emotional labour. Emotions at work are an
important part of company life. Help people understand their reactions to emotional labor, and develop policies
and procedures to reduce the negative impact of emotional labor. These are ways to improve overall
performance and worker satisfaction.
Organisation Culture influences not only what people think, say and do but also what they feel. In addition to
culture change, the increasing move towards internal markets within large organizations means that more
employees will have to treat employees in other sections and departments as customers or clients rather than coworkers
and hence be subjected to more emotion display rules (and, arguably, emotional labour). Attitudes to
work and a willingness and ability to handle the emotional aspects of work are components of competence
easily overlooked in the design of training programmes, particularly those concerned with procedural skills. It
may be that training alone is an insufficient response to such a complex issue and that ongoing support,
monitoring and advice, needs to be formalized within a continuous development scheme. A system of workplace
mentoring or the "buddy system" favoured by some manufacturing industries could prove useful in this regard.
Though many employers do not acknowledge the existence of emotional labor, it is a real occupational hazard
that may generate life-altering effects on physical and emotional health. In many senses, the debate around
emotional labour has moved on from Hochschild’s initial premises and continues to shed new and valuable light
on a once hidden aspect of service work.
9. Scope for further research
A number of challenges await those conducting research in this domain, some of which are theoretical while
others are measurement related. Despite these challenges, the potential for a significant contribution to
Emotional labour can be a powerful integrative concept that brings together these, as well as other, fruitful areas
of study. The implications of commodification for the interface between employee, ‘end user’ and organisation
is a further area of inquiry which can throw light on some of the moral and ethical considerations around such
work. Further research into emotions at work will shape future education, management and research strategies
in keeping emotional labour at the forefront of any service jobs.
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