Emotional Labor

Emotional Labor

Student’s Name

Institution of Learning

Emotional Labor

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1983) coined the term emotional labor to refer to the effort expended when workers alter their outward behavior (emotions, verbal cues, body language, and so on) to conform to an ideal specified by their employer. (Korgen & Korgen & Giraffe, 2015).  It is a requirement for most employers that workers and co-workers control their emotions in their place of work. Teachers, nurses are some of the workers who have to deal with emotional labor in the workplace.  Emotional labor can be classified into  deep acting and surface and surface acting.

         Teachers who have worked in a school for a more extended period can deep act. Besides, the teachers holding seniority positions are also able to match their emotions with the requirements of the job. Deep acting reaches its maximum level among teachers handling children between six to ten years. However, those dealing with learners below the age of six have to fake their emotions.

Nurses too face a hard time in managing their emotions in cases where the patient is in pain. Although they also get emotional, they are not required to show their feelings to the patients.  Moreover, they at times face physical assaults from patients, yet their work ethics needs them to politely respond to the cases of surface acting in the nursing profession therefore is usually at its maximum level.

According to Pierce (2010) the people working at the human resource desk frequently receive multiple questions and complaint, and yet they are expected to remain calm and respond nicely to the customer. Research has shown that when an individual can emotionally act, they are not as tired as those who have to fake their feelings to please the customers they are attending.

Maxon (n.d.) suggested that employers can create counseling sessions at the workplace for the employees to attend in case their job becomes stressful (para.18). Also, Maxon (n.d) advised them to can make a flexible work schedule in the organization as well as create telecommuting opportunities (para.17).  

References

Hochshild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

Korgen, K. O., Korgen, J. O., & Giraffe, V. (2015). Social issues in the workplace (2nd ed.)  [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu

Maxon, R. (n.d.). Stress in the work place: a costly epidemic. FDU magazine. Retrieved from http://fdu.edu/newspubs/magazine/99su/stress.html

Pierce, J. (2010, May 13). Emotional labor study at the University of Memphis [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/jOj-0fm79AA