There are different emotions people often experience at work, and one related concept to this is emotional labor. In some jobs, employees are expected to perform emotional labor most of the time. Salespeople, for example, are often required to be cheerful and polite, even to the most unpleasant customers. However, this can create high levels of stress and burnout for employees to the extent that they often have to hide their true feelings. Additionally, to the extent that a customer is rude or abusive, demands for emotional labor might be questionable on ethical grounds. Are there limits to the extent to which an employer should require employees to perform emotional labor? If so, what are these limits? If not, why not? Under what condition do you think it would be unethical to require emotional labor from employees? Be specific.

 

I think there are limits to which employer should require emoloyees to perform emotional labor. I believe that discriminatory behavior, potential damage on health and life-threatening scenario are examples of the limitations.

If the basis of the behavior of the customer is discriminatory in nature, the employee should not perform emotional labor. There are customers who are rude to employees with color. There are also customers who assults employees for just being a woman. Some also look down to employees and make them feel worthless. When these happen, employee should fight for her rights and dignity.

There are studies that links emotional labor as having a potential to damage one's health and well-being. Obviously when you always try to control your emotions, stress would eventually consume you. Stress is said to be the precursor of a lot of sickness. When employees are stressed, productivity level is affected and would slowly result to a financial impact on the business operations.

Violence happens in the workplace. Having diverse customers also means having different emotions to deal with. Emotional labor affects the customers greatly that their next behavior is persuaded by this. There are violent tendencies in people that are triggered by low service quality or inauthentic customer service. Sometimes these tendencies are life-threatening.

------

Emotional labor is unethical if it conceals negative information about a product or a service and exaggerates the benefits of what products or services could provide. It is also unethical when employee fails to inform customers the important changes that products or services has underwent.

When an employee markets a product for an instance, it is natural that only the good benefits of it is only shown or stated. It will encourage potential customers to avail the product because they were persuaded by the positive benefits. However, if the customer has experienced negative effects or adverse effects (pharmaceutical) definitely disappointment and later on anger will prevail. There will be trust issues in the relationship. Imagine the effects of this in customer relations as well as the effect on the employees themselves.

The same goes through with exaggerating the benefits of a product or a service. When it is represented as if it is better than the competitor, it creates a misleading truth. Since the employee represents the company, customers assume that the whole company's objective is not that trustworthy. Employees are being labeled by customers on the basis of how good or bad their product or service offerings are.

The employee will have to face disgruntled customers when there is failure in update dissemination regarding changes in the products or services. How do you put a happy face in front of unsatisfied customers? It is difficult to comply in emotional labor knowing that you are aware of the shortcomings and yet you have to be consistent in concealing those.

Step-by-step explanation

Before we could answer the questions, we must be able to know what emotional labor is all about.

Positive and negative things happen in our lives everyday. This is simply the way of life. There are times for happiness but there will also be a time for sadness, a time for shedding of tears and definitely a lot of time to be angry. Indeed, a rollercoaster of emotions that is.

We are entitled to our feelings and express them freely as we could imagine. But did you know that there are people who are compelled to show and express a specific emotion or gesture almost always? Yes you heard it right. Workers assigned primarily in dealing with customers face-to-face are good examples. Even how disappointed and frustrated you are as a customer, the waitress will remain positive and reserved all throughout the transaction. Imagine how many customers like that would she be dealing with for the rest of her shift? The same goes with the hotel receptionists, flight attendants, saleslady and counselors amomg others. There job entails them to manage their emotions and express them in a specific way. This is what we call emotional labor.

---

Could you think of other reasons why emotional labor should be limited?

---

There are pretty much unethical results of emotional labor, could you think of some more? Add them to the answers for it to be more personal and relatable.