The Impact of Daily Emotional Labor on Health and Well-Being

Abstract

Emotional labor research largely focuses on client-facing occupations. However, employees across occupations engage in emotional labor when they perceive that specific types of emotional communication are required to align with organizational expectations. The current two-week daily survey study of 42 employees was conducted at a small website development company to examine relationships between employees’ emotional labor, physical health, and psychological well-being. Results indicated that daily emotional labor surface acting was significantly negatively related to daily psychological well-being and daily physical health. However, daily emotional labor deep acting was not significantly related to daily psychological well-being or daily physical health. After aggregating emotional labor across days, results revealed a significant positive relationship between emotional labor and burnout. This study enhances organizational awareness of the relationship between emotional communication expectations and employees’ psychological and physical health. Research-driven practices are detailed to ameliorate the negative side effects of emotional labor communication demands.

Engineering Emotion Sustainably: Affective Gendered Organizing of Engineering Identities and Third Space

“…Much of this research has focused on work itself, particular professions, well-being, and sustainability, and representing Miller et al's workplace emotion types in overlapping ways. Riforgiate et al [33] defined emotional labor as the "management of emotions as part of one's job performance" (p. 392) and explored its links to daily communication, physical health, and psychological well-being through a two-week-long diary study. They found that different forms of emotional labor might prove detrimental to workers' well-being.…”

“…you take a fair amount of unpleasant things and just deal with it." These comments constitute the marginalizing communication often found in STEM cultures [33].…”

Interactive Management Research in Organizational Communication

“…Interactive management research offers organizational communication scholars a tool to research diverse topics within the discipline of communication studies. For example, IMR would be particularly useful in domains such as the following: identifying ways to promote employee well-being (Riforgiate, et al, 2021); creating diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces (Ballard et al, 2020); facilitating organizational sensemaking in response to a crisis (Sahay & Dwyer, 2021); or promoting Corporate Social Responsibility through strategic planning based on stakeholders’ input (Maktoufi et al, 2020). Infusing these domains with IMR methods offers a methodological approach that promotes organizing through participants’ collective intelligence and communication.…”

Managing Human Capital Through the Use of Performance Improvement Plans

“…Employees are not the only ones that may suffer unintended adverse outcomes associated with PIPs embedded within disciplinary structures due to the emotional nature of the exchange (Miller-Merrell, 2021). Managers who supervise the PIP process may also suffer poor work outcomes such as stress related burnout and emotional dissonance if they experience a conflict of emotion (Humphrey, 2012;Pugh et al, 2011;Riforgiate et al, 2022). As an occupational requirement, emotional labor requires the employee (in this example, the manager) to look and act in specific ways to meet the demands of the job (Grandey et al, 2015;Grandey, & Sayre, 2019;Humphrey et al, 2008).…”