What You Need to Know About Emotional Labor
Emotional labor has been a hot topic in the media in the last few years. But what is it, exactly?
Some writers have used the term emotional labor to describe the “invisible” work such as remembering birthdays that might fall to a female co-worker rather than a male coworker, or tasks that women are typically expected to manage in heterosexual relationships, or as one self-described bro defines it, “shit someone does that goes unrecognized,” or SSDTGU for short.
However, emotional labor is not work that women do that might be overlooked by others. Emotional labor is done by both genders. It also doesn’t have to be invisible. It’s the work that an employee undertakes to fulfill the emotional display requirements of the job.
I had the pleasure of attending a lecture on emotional labor with Prof. James Diefendorff of University of Akron a few years ago. He is a leading researcher on the topic, and provided an overview of the field and his own research. His lecture informs much of this article, and I add my comments as why it matters to organizations and workers alike.
What is emotional labor?
Many jobs require people to act a certain way emotionally. For example, a salesperson at a department store might be required to be friendly and chipper towards customers. The ways people are required to act emotionally in a job are referred to as display rules. Emotional labor is the work that goes into regulating one’s emotions to meet the display rules of the job.
Display rules can take many forms, such as the following:
Formal expectations. Formal expectations are stated expectations of employees to act a certain way. One example is the grocery chain Safeway’s “Superior Service” rules, which include a 19-point friendliness report card requiring employees to make eye contact, smile, and greet customers–oops, I mean “guests.”
Perceived norms. In some jobs the emotional display rules might not be stated out loud, but simply assumed. For example, a secretary at a law firm may not be explicitly told to smile and greet all of the partners when they come in the office, but it might still be expected.
Demands to express positive. Surely every customer service professional is familiar with the expectation of “service with a smile,” regardless of how the individual actually feels.
Demands to suppress negative. Workers who deal with angry clients or customers, for example, are often required to suppress their negative emotions. A public official is generally expected to listen to angry constituents without getting angry or otherwise upset in return.
Emotional masking. In many jobs, it is important to appear to be impartial and emotionless. For example, a judge in a courtroom is required to be stoic and as impartial as possible. A judge would hardly be doing their job if they had emotional outbursts throughout a trial’s proceedings.
When a person’s inner emotional state doesn’t line up with the expectations of the job, the individual experiences emotional dissonance. The bigger the difference between the expectations of the job and what the individual is really feeling, the bigger the emotive effort required on the part of the individual. This can lead to decreased job satisfaction, and even burnout.
Is emotional labor a bad thing?
Emotional labor is not necessarily a bad thing, and it doesn’t always lead to bad outcomes for the individual. All emotional labor is not created equal. Researchers recognize both surface acting and deep acting, and these two types of emotional labor affect us in different ways.
In surface acting, the individual makes superficial emotional displays, such as plastering a smile on one’s face when they’re having a bad day. We might call surface acting the “fake it ‘til you make it” strategy. When engaging in surface acting, an individual doesn’t work to change their internal state. Surface acting is associated with lower well-being. For example, one study found that employees who have to force happiness for their customers tend to drink more heavily when they get off work. It just doesn’t feel good to have to fake your way through the workday.
Conversely, deep acting refers to actually changing one’s demeanor both internally as well as externally, and doesn’t seem to lead to poor outcomes like surface acting does. For example, part of a doctor’s job is to empathize with patients, which requires emotional labor. Ideally a doctor would actually summon true empathy for a patient, rather than fake it.
However, in some cases surface acting might not be that bad either, if it’s being done for an important reason. For example, an exasperated child care worker might engage in surface acting by not yelling at the children.
Why should we pay attention to emotional labor?
For more and more jobs, it’s as much how you do the job as it is what you do, because part of the job is eliciting a particular feeling in others. For example, hair stylists and bartenders are famous for doubling as “therapists,” lending an ear to their customers. It’s not enough to cut hair or mix drinks, to be excellent at these jobs the customer must feel pampered and welcomed. And yet, in so many job descriptions, the emotional component is invisible.
If your company’s job descriptions don’t have any reference to the emotional labor that’s required for the role, chances are the company isn’t hiring or training for these elements of the job. In some roles, there can be serious consequences for overlooking the emotional labor inherent in a role. For example, if an organization that hires counselors or social workers doesn’t train their employees on emotional management techniques, the employees may not have the skills they to regulate their emotions in accordance with the job. They might not work as well with clients, or they might burn out easily and the organization can experience high turnover.
Additionally, emotional labor matters to individual workers. When an individual is a poor fit for either an organization or the work itself (for example, a very introverted person working in a high-paced sales job), there tends to be more surface acting than deep acting, which leads to more negative outcomes. If there isn’t a good fit between the worker and the job, the individual will have to work harder to achieve the display rules. They’re less likely to stay in the job for a long time and will probably be less satisfied in the job than someone who’s a better fit. When considering your career, it pays to find a job that’s a good fit.
How does emotional labor factor into the future of work?
A recent report my McKinsey found that about half of the tasks people are paid to do could theoretically be automated with the technology available today. The tasks that aren’t going to be automated involve things like critical thinking, creativity, and (you guessed it!) emotional labor. Jobs that involve caring such as home care workers and physical therapists are some of the fastest-growing jobs today.
As the nature of jobs changes with increasing automation, much of the workforce needs to be retrained to fill the skills gap. We will do a disservice to both workers and organizations if we don’t consider skills related to emotional labor a priority alongside “hard” skills such as data analytics.
Considering the outsized effect that emotional labor has on a person’s job performance, it’s likely that emotional labor is undervalued in today’s economy. The ability to identify abilities around emotional labor in potential hires and train existing employees is a competitive advantage for organizations.
Does emotional labor affect women and men differently?
Men and women often face different expectations around emotional display rules. For example, women are often penalized more harshly than men for being assertive or expressing anger. Arlie Russel Hochschild, the sociologist who coined the term “emotional labor,” described the “status shield” that insulates men from the emotions of others, and also protects men from needing to engage in emotional labor to the same degree as women.
In an interview with Rose Hackman, sociologist Jennifer Lena states “there are certain jobs where [emotional labor] is a requirement, where there is no training provided, and where there’s a positive bias towards certain people – women – doing it.”
Psychological research seems to support Lena’s assertion. In one study that looked at gender differences in the emotional labor of nurses, men reported less emotional expectations than women, and benefitted more when they did engage in emotional labor. This could be because women are stereotyped as being “naturally” be good at tasks requiring emotional labor, whereas men are not.
When men and women are held to different standards in the same job, we should always be paying attention, because it is sex-based discrimination that is illegal and immoral. Clearly, emotional labor requirements differ for men and women in the workplace. By better understanding emotional labor, organizations will be better equipped to battle sex-based discrimination.
The bottom line on emotional labor
Emotional labor is a part of virtually all jobs that require any degree of interpersonal skills. There are very few jobs in the 21st century that don’t require any interpersonal skills at all, since nearly all jobs require interacting with other people, whether they’re customers, managers, or coworkers.
If you’re overlooking the emotional labor requirements of the job, you’re probably not hiring the best people for the job, not training them correctly, and therefore not getting the best performance out of your workforce.