Emotional Labour: Exploring The Unwritten Emotional Expectations of A Job, and How Businesses Can Offer Support

We have probably all engaged in ‘emotional labour’ to some extent throughout our careers. We will all be doing more as we manage the feelings of our customers, co-workers, and ourselves in order to carry on working in a post-lockdown world. So we want to discuss what exactly emotional labour is, and how businesses can support their people in performing these emotional tasks at work. 

Emotional labour describes the process of managing one’s emotions by regulating or suppressing them in a work setting in order to shape the state of mind of another individual, such as a customer or a co-worker. This labour is not often compensated for, and tends to be an unwritten expectation of the job description. 

Traditionally, emotional labour was thought to take place predominantly in service-based jobs such as social work, law, medical care, and hospitality, where people are often expected to regulate or suppress their own emotions and prioritise those who they are serving. 

Nowadays, emotional labour is thought to extend to any job that requires face-to-face contact with other people, or where you are required to produce an emotional state in another person as part of your job, such as a manager. Many of us may have experienced situations at work where we are required to pull ourselves together, put on a brave face, or repress emotions related to a non-work issue in order to deliver on a work goal.

Many New Zealanders will have been performing emotional labour to a greater extent over the last few months as a result of Covid-19. We have been living and working in a climate of heightened emotions and increased uncertainty over the past couple of months as a result of Covid-19. This makes it all the more difficult to attempt to repress or regulate your emotions in a work setting when the intensity is stronger than usual, when it spills over to other aspects of your life, or when the emotions are a result of the work itself. Not to mention, many people will not be used to the intensity of emotions they are feeling right now, or those that are elicited by their customers or clients, and may not be equipped to deal with this.

The problem with emotional labour is that it can become a job stressor that leads to burnout because it requires a significant degree of effort to express emotions that are inconsistent to a person’s genuine emotions. The inauthenticity of faking expressions and surface acting (i.e. acting in a certain way without changing how you actually feel) is cognitively taxing. It poses a threat to one’s self-worth and self-efficacy, and can lead to frustration with employers when a person perceives that their workplace is not providing them with the resources to cope with this aspect of their job. All of which contribute directly to performance and productivity. 

So what can you do?

Emotional labour is just as much about business leaders recognising and rewarding this type of labour, as it is about developing an environment where emotional expressiveness is valued and supported. 

So we want to share some ways in which your business can support their people to carry out this labour in a way that avoids stress and burnout.

1. Make the aspects of emotional labour in a job explicit 

• This helps to set expectations and acknowledge it as added work, 

• Clarify what emotions are ok to have at work

• This also helps people determine whether their personality style is a good fit for a job

2. Make emotional communication the norm

• Build time into the day to talk about how you’re feeling and create opportunities for your team to be vulnerable and honest

• Invite people to talk about both work and non-work issues that are creating a mental load

• Encourage people to share their experiences of what helps

• This encourages people to be authentic in their emotional expression, and helps with the wider teams awareness about their co-workers emotional states so that fewer surface acting tasks are required 

3. Make mental health a top priority

• Have open conversations about when it is ok not to come to work – recognise that this is not a personal failure

• Provide resources such as EAP and emotional support services outside the workplace

4. Recognise that there is more emotional labour to be done right now

• Be cognisant of managing workloads carefully and anticipating how emotional events will translate to work, on the assumption that there may be more emotional labour to do at some times than others, or it may be harder for people to perform it at certain times

5. Provide and support training in effective emotional coping strategies

• Create programmes or workshops that develop coping skills in people – these involve developing techniques to name emotions, expressing them in words, using active distraction when the emotion is overwhelming, and practicing cognitive reappraisal – reframing an event to alter its emotional impact 

• While some people have more developed coping strategies than others, it takes training to translate these into a work context

6. Celebrate your people

• Continually reinforce positive emotion in your people by celebrating successes, giving praise and acknowledgement, and show appreciation for effort exerted and work produced.

Emotional labour is a powerful and important component of all workplace relationships. Make sure you are supporting your people to do their best work and giving them the tools to get through this time of heightened emotion and uncertainty.