In a digital age where remote office setups, personal life happenings, and work have become inextricably intertwined, emotional labor, or the process of managing your emotions to maintain the status quo, has become burdensome.
Originally coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, the term “emotional labor” most often affects customer-facing roles like sales, hospitality, and counselling—roles in which being pleasant and happy equals success.
Over time, keeping a smile plastered on your face throughout bad days and coffee spills becomes exhausting. It’s no surprise then that following Hochschild’s foundational 1980s text on the subject, subsequent research found that emotional labor can be harmful to employees’ mental health and well-being.
More interestingly, on the employer side, there’s not much evidence to suggest that forsaking employees’ well-being for ever-present positivity impacts company productivity or their bottom line.
Luckily, there are effective ways to manage emotional labor and continue being great at what you do. In this article, we share a deeper insight into what emotional labor is and some effective tips to manage it, both for employers and employees.
What Counts as Emotional Labor?
Plastering on a smile and acting happy without considering your internal emotional landscape comes at a price. But the exact price depends on the effort required to act happy.
Hochschild broke this effort down into the two components of emotional labor—surface acting and deep acting:
- Surface acting is when employees express positive emotions without changing how they feel inside
- Deep acting is when employees change their internal state to reflect positive emotions and align with business values so that their positive displays of emotions seem more genuine.
The Effects of Emotional Labor On Employee Satisfaction and Proficiency
Experts are still debating what type of acting is more harmful. Some researchers say surface-acting can be more detrimental than deep-acting. However, more recent studies say there’s no significant difference between the two types of acting.
Regardless, there’s one thing we can all agree on: emotional labor, whether surface or deep, takes a toll on employees’ mental health.
The effort to keep up appearances depletes individuals emotionally, leaving them burnt out. It reduces their job satisfaction and negatively affects their work-life balance. It also depletes employees’ cognitive capabilities, especially executive functions such as attention and the ability to direct thoughts.
These effects together create a snowball effect that leads to unhappy team members who are error-prone and less inclined to fully engage with and take initiative with their work. Their commitment to their work also significantly plummets.
From an employee’s perspective, not only are they emotionally drained, mentally maxed out, and dealing with burnout, but they become prone to physical health complications like high blood pressure.
That being said, there are some great ways to manage emotional labor at work and prevent both job-related and health-related pitfalls.
6 Tips on Managing Emotional Labor at Work for Improved Well-Being and Job Satisfaction Mental Health
Here are some effective tips for managing emotional labor both for employees and employers.
Tips for Employees
1: Validate Your Emotions
One of the easiest yet most effective ways to manage and reduce emotional labor is to validate your inner emotional landscape, both positive and negative. It might seem counterintuitive to lean into negative emotions such as frustration, but doing so can help alleviate the additional effort required to change one’s emotional state.
It also creates an opportunity for you to practice authenticity, especially among your coworkers, and there is always power in community, which brings us to the next point.
2: Lean into Your Workplace Community
Chances are if you’re experiencing emotional labor and it’s starting to exhaust you, you’re not alone. Your coworkers may be experiencing the same thing, especially if you’re all in consumer-facing roles.
Leaning into your community at work can reduce the burden associated with constantly keeping up peppy displays of expression when interacting with consumers or clients. Try opening a dialogue with a coworker or even a coach!
When it comes to connection, remote employees can significantly benefit from flexible office spaces, as they provide more chances for that connection to occur, leading to improved mental health outcomes.
3: Take Mental Health Breaks
Taking breaks on the job, even short ones, can boost mental health and productivity at work. It can give you a reprieve from both surface and deep acting as well as a chance to recenter and reconnect with yourself. This is easy to do in a coworking or flexible office space setting, especially ones with dedicated resting spaces or nap pods.
Suppose you’re using your breaks to reconnect with yourself. In that case, breaks can be a great opportunity to check in with yourself, helping you practice self-validation and authenticity with yourself. Again, if you work in a flexible office space, you can find a private resting space to sit in silence or you may opt for a solo walk.
Lastly, you can use your breaks to connect with your coworkers, decompress, and chat honestly about how you may be feeling or how your day is going so far—that can also boost your mental health.
Tips for Employers
1: Create More Workplace Autonomy for Your Employees
Creating an environment where employees feel autonomy over their emotions yet can execute on consumer-facing interactions pleasantly when needed can be a fine balance, but it is a crucial one to achieve. This is true both for remote and satellite companies.
While positive displays of emotions in such roles can help with business objectives, it is important to provide employees with a space or container for genuine emotions to be felt.
This may look like:
- Creating policies where employees are not penalized for expressing their emotions openly
- Encouraging employees to connect with their coworkers to foster a stronger sense of community and improve job satisfaction
- Encouraging employees to share their opinions and feelings with HR or even a coach outside of work
- Investing in a flexible office space so employees, whether remote or part of a satellite team, can properly connect with their community of colleagues, leading to a significantly improved sense of well-being. Flexible office spaces create spatial diversity by having a variety of spaces for such employees to work and lounge in—this gives employees autonomy by allowing them to move around and work however they see fit within those spaces.
2: Recognize and Reward Employees for Their Efforts at Work
An important part of job satisfaction is feeling valued at work. This part may be even more important for consumer-facing employees compared to non-consumer-facing jobs. Because they are much more prone to experiencing the burden of emotional labor, consumer-facing employees can feel the weight of feeling undervalued to a greater degree.
So, rewarding such employees and recognizing them for their hard work can help them feel valued, which, in turn, is an effective way to reduce the negative impact of emotional labor.
3: Create Physical Space(s) for Connection and Community
Another great way to encourage employees to connect with their coworkers is to create opportunities for in-person interactions. If you’re a remote company or satellite enterprise, you’ll want to invest in a flexible workspace that allows employees to chat, connect, and foster a better sense of belonging.
The spatial diversity in these flexible offices creates more opportunities for connection—individuals can spark conversation while grabbing complimentary coffee or lounging in communal areas. Again, this helps foster community both for satellite teams and remote employees.
Launch creates workspaces with open-concept areas that allow for conversation and connection from which employees can benefit.
If you’re a remote employee, Launch has a melting pot of professionals from different industries at their coworking spaces—we love facilitating introductions, so you can make genuine connections with others. Creating these bonds may be especially helpful if you’re a remote employee in a consumer-facing role; you can take a break and decompress by chatting with another member in our cafe or hitting up the gym together.
Happier Employees, Better Work, and a Stronger Community
All in all, emotional labor can truly feel laborious. At some point, it becomes too exhausting for employees to manage their emotional state, leading to poor mental health, burnout, dissatisfaction at work, and—most likely—a disgruntled frustration. Luckily, fostering open communication, mindfulness, and community can help mitigate the negative effects of emotional labor. This may look like encouraging breaks or investing in flexible office spaces for better communication between colleagues.
If you’re looking for a professional workplace to foster a stronger sense of community and mitigate these negatives, you’ll find it at Launch. Book a tour of your local Launch Workplaces today.
