What are human and organizational costs of emotional labor and /or toxic emotions?
Discuss and illustrate how organizations and individuals should handle these challenges.
Emotional labor is a type of emotional management, which entails the management of emotions in the workplace. The management of emotions in the workplace is extremely important especially when an individual is working in a service based industry. The three main aspects of emotional labor are; planning, effort, and control . The events at work place have real emotional impact on the employees. However, negative emotions, such as, sadness, stress, hostility, guilt, fear, and anger, increase the predictability of workplace deviance and how the outside environment views the organization. This is because the most basic unit of any organization is comprised of human beings, carrying out the most significant tasks. This paper will discuss various types of toxic emotions, which can be possessed by employees of an organization. In addition, it will also discuss various ways through which management can be able to deal with toxic emotions within the organization.
Intention: The Role of Malice
Employees within an organization can decide to be malicious. This can be brought about by a wide range of factors. One of the main factors, which can make employees resort to malicious activities, is lack of proper understanding between management and employees. The management team of any organization is responsible for formulating all of the policies within the organization . Company policies are usually formulated as they help the management in decision making. It is imperative for the management to communicate their decisions to employees. This is because, in the event that the management does not do so, employees may react negatively towards certain decisions. For instance, the management of the company may find it necessary to implement pay cuts. If the management implements pay cuts without communicating with employees, they might end up feeling victimized. As a result, some of employees may maliciously engange in activities that are detrimental to the company. Employees may decide to strike, destroy, or loot some of the property of the company. For example, in 2011 Qantas airlines employees went on strike owing to pay disputes, which costed the company millions in losses.
However, management can prevent such activities from taking place. One of the ways through which management can achieve this objective is by ensuring that they communicate all their decisions to employees in a manner that is easy to understand. It is as well crucial for the management to create a publicly observable and desirable emotional display as a part of a job role. Additionally, in the course of decision making, management should also take into account the feelings and needs of employees. This is because, by doing so, the management team will refrain from implementing decisions that are likely to create emotional labor or toxic emotions. Over and above that, management needs to ensure that all employees within the organization are trained in good communication skills. By doing so, the management will be able to reduce the likelihood of employees resulting in malicious damage. Employees will be informed on the proper channels to use, when they want to complain about any issue or issues that are affecting them. This point vividly shows that malice originates from toxic emotions, and it eventually leads to both human and organisational costs.
Incompetence: Managers with weak or inadequate people skills
Any form of incompetence within the organization serves as a great disadvantage against the organization. Incompetence provides a suitable breeding ground for mediocrity and the managers within the organization should be trained on interpersonal skills. Inadequate interpersonal skills can lead to the development of emotional labor or toxic emotions among employees. For example, when the manager has weak or inadequate communication skills, he or she is likely to cause a lot of misunderstanding between management and employees. If a manager awards or praises employees who arrive at work early and they do quality work, he or she is likely to influence the character of employees. In the event that a manager fails to promote good character or rebuke bad character within an organization, he or she will lead to the development of emotional labor or toxic emotions. This may make them feel that they do not need to go the extra mile and instead they can just display the average performance like all the other employees. For example, Jeff Immelt the president of General Electricals has been able to propel the company to prosperity due to his high interpersonal skills and other management and leadership skills.
One of the ways through which the board of directors can ensure that each and every manager within the organization has good interpersonal skills is through the development of workshops on social skills. The board of directors should make it compulsory, for each and every member, of the management team to attend these workshops. During such workshops; managers will be educated on the importance of teamwork, and ways of developing and promoting teamwork . They will also be educated on ways of influencing their subordinates, as well as techniques of communicating with people within and outside the organization. In addition to that, they will be trained in conflict management and catalyzing change within the organization. This point illustrates that incompetence can lead to the formation of emotional labour and toxic emotions, and it provides ways of handling this challenge.
Insensitivity: People who are emotionally unintelligent
It is imperative for management and the board of directors to appreciate that there are persons within the organization who are emotionally unintelligent. A person is considered to be emotionally unintelligent if he or she is not capable of reading or studying the emotions of other people. A good manager should be emotionally intelligent. This is because a manager needs to be capable of reading the mood of employees. By doing so, he or she will be able to determine whether or not employees are well motivated. A manager needs to be capable of understanding an interpreting the various emotional cues that are being communicated by employees. This is because through analyzing, the wide range of emotional cues being presented by employees, the manager can be in a good position of determining the emotional state of his or her members of staff.
For instance; in the course text one is able to read about the flight attendant that quit is job due to toxic emotions. He was a flight attendant at JetBlue and during one flight a passenger mistreated. The flight attendant tried his best to conduct himself in a professional manner, as required by the company policy. However, the passenger continued to mistreat him. This made him extremely angry thus he took the microphone and uttered colorful words to the passenger. Thereafter, he went ahead to quit his job. This point shows how insentivity catalyses the formation of emotional and toxic labour. It also proposes mechanisms for handling this type of challenge.
How individuals can deal with emotional labor or toxic emotions
The ability to effectively deal with emotional labor and toxic emotions in the workplace could be achieved not only by decreasing work demands but also by increasing the personal resources of employees, including emotional intelligence. The increasing of emotional intelligence skills necessary for successful job performance can help workers to deal more effectively with their feelings, and thus directly decrease the level of job stress and indirectly protect their health.To that, Managers should ensure that the leadership styles and managerial practices applied within the organization lead to all employees being treated fairly and with respect, and that sensitivity to personal needs and vulnerability is taken into account. Moreover it is necessary that managers receive necessary training in conflict management. This point exemplifies organizations should handle the challenge ofemotional labour and toxic emotions.
Conclusion
Emotional labor and toxic emotions are factors which can be managed. They can be managed through the implementation of the various techniques which have been discussed throughout the essay. Failure to manage toxic emotions and emotional labor can lead to employee turnover. This is because the rate of employee turnover will exhibit a direct relationship to the level of toxic emotions. This implies that when the level of toxic emotions continues to increase, the rate of employee turnover will also increase. Employee turnover is one type of human costs that are experienced by a company. Employee turnover leads to the loss of personnel which a company might have invested in their professional development. Due to this, companies need to institute policies that are geared toward minimizing the development of any form of toxic emotions. It can also lead to increased job dissatisfaction among the employees and decreased productivity. This in turn can translate into losses for the company.
Bibliography
Frost, P. J., 2004. Handline toxic emotions: New Challenges for Leaders and their organisaton. Organisational Dynamics, 33(2), pp. 111-127.
Hochschild, A. R., 2012. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. London: University of Carlifornia .
Stevens, W., 2011. Emotional Intelligence As a leadership Strategy to Make Leaders Great. New York: GRIN.
