Picture this – you’re in a meeting with a client and they start shouting at you about a ‘mistake’ in your work, when it’s actually because they gave you the wrong information to work with. But you grin and bear it because it’s not expected of you to argue with a client.
Or perhaps you’re having a conversation with your boss and he starts complaining about his wife – how are you meant to react here? So you just nod and smile and make agreeable noises at acceptable intervals.
Have you ever had a male colleague complain about another colleague and asked you to ‘handle the situation’ so you have to try and be a mediator? And if you are in a public-facing role, dealing with customers means having to keep your cool and provide exceptional service even when they’re being rude.
These are just a few examples of what is known as ’emotional labour’ in the workplace. Grace Loh, psychotherapist, counsellor and coach at Counselling Perspective, tell us that this term can be defined as the effort, planning and control required to express the most needed emotions during interpersonal communications.
“In the context of the workplace, emotional labour is the expectation that an employee should manipulate one’s actual emotions or the appearance of emotions to satisfy the perceived requirements of the role. This encompasses feigning, repressing, amplifying or modifying one’s emotions,” she elaborates.
The term ’emotional labour’ was coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in 1983 and this maintenance of emotional composure or modulation of emotions differs from what one really feels inside.
“Emotions are either expected to be evoked or suppressed,” Grace explains. “Despite emotional labour being an obligatory requirement for numerous professions, women are inordinately burdened to bear emotional labour in the workplace with the expectations to willingly undertake menial tasks, be pleasing and obliging and be responsible for maintaining harmony in the workplace.”