What Are the Experiences of Emotional Labor and Workplace Violence that Are More Harmful to Health in Korean Workforce?

Abstract

(1) Background: This study aims to investigate the impact of emotional labor and workplace violence on sleep disturbance, depression, and health status in workers. (2) Methods: Data from 34,742 participants of the 2011–2014 Korean Working Conditions Survey were included in this study. We compared the incidence of sleep disturbance, depression, and health status according to emotional labor and workplace violence and used logistic regression to analyze factors that affect health status. (3) Results: Emotional laborers were more likely to experience sleep disturbance, depression and anxiety, and muscle pain. Workers who have experienced workplace violence were more likely to experience depression and anxiety, abdominal pain, and sleep disturbance. (4) Conclusion: Emotional labor and workplace violence have a grave impact on physical and mental health, with particularly greater effects on mental health. In addition, workplace violence has a greater health impact than emotional labor. The findings of this study suggest the need to implement programs that stabilize and heal workers who have experienced emotional labor and to enforce regulations and policies to protect workers from verbal and physical abuse.

Associations Between Workplace Violence, Mental Health, and Physical Health among Korean Workers: The Fifth Korean Working Conditions Survey

“…In the Sixth EWCS, workers reported experiencing verbal abuse, threats, physical violence, and sexual harassment at 12%, 4%, 2%, and 1%, respectively (Eurofound, 2017). The results of this study showed a lower prevalence of WPV compared with the results of EWCS; however, there was no improvement compared with results of the 2011-2014 KWCS (Hwang et al, 2020). The methodology and questionnaire used in the KWCS were the same as those used in the EWCS.…”

“…Consistent with previous studies (Lu et al, 2019;Saberi et al, 2019), the highest rates of violence in the KWCS were verbal abuse and the lowest rates were from physical violence. This is significant because both verbal and physical violence have been reported to be associated with poor health status (Hwang et al, 2020;Pien et al, 2019).…”

“…WPV has been a poorly controlled problem since it was recognized in the 1970s (Magnavita et al, 2019), and its prevalence has not improved in recent Korean Working Conditions Survey (KWCS) and European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) reports (García-Herrero et al, 2017;Kim, 2017), becoming an increasing social concern in Korea . Workers' demographic characteristics, working conditions, and job sector are considered risk factors for WPV in Korea (Choi et al, 2018;Hong et al, 2019;Hwang et al, 2020;Kim & Yoon, 2017); for example, long work hours are known to increase the prevalence of WPV (Choi et al, 2018). A recent national survey found that the following groups were more likely to report sexual harassment, bullying, and physical violence: women, high school graduates rather than college graduates, those engaged in shift work, and those working in service sectors with frequent customer contact (Hong et al, 2019).…”

“…In recent years, WPV has been discussed in terms of health risk factors among various job sectors in Korea (Hwang et al, 2020;Kang et al, 2019;Kim & Yoon, 2017;. However, there is a gap in the literature linking the prevalence of WPV to the health impacts on workers.…”

Safe Working Conditions As Corporate Responsibility Element In Pandemic

“…The bacterial hazard of work is assessed only in the context of the organization's activities for the production and synthesis of chemicals and is not considered as a single risk factor for all types of work. In some cases, the psycho-emotional reward for the employee is assessed (Hwang et al, 2020;Taouk et al, 2020).…”