Emotion Work and its Effect on Employees' Wellbeing

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the impact of emotional work on psychological wellbeing of employees and found that positive emotions, interactional control and sensitivity dimensions of emotion work are significantly positively related with psychological wellbeing followed by its negative association with negative emotions and emotional dissonance.

Abstract: Understanding the importance of appropriate regulation of emotions is an integral part of one's organizational life. The existing scenario of modern workplace involves frequent emotional outbursts in the forms of anger, distress etc. Literature shows that exhibition of inappropriate feelings and its positive relation with adoption of pessimistic attitude towards work life. As a result, occurrence of emotional distress further takes an internal toll on employees' cognitive health and wellbeing. Therefore, organizational psychologists in India are required to work upon professional handling of emotions on the job. This study examines the impact of emotional work on psychological wellbeing of employees. Using stratified random sampling 346 county employees were sampled using a crosssectional survey design. The participants were individually administered on Psychological well being scale and Frankfurt emotion work scale. Correlational analysis of data shows positive emotions, interactional control and sensitivity dimensions of emotion work are significantly positively related with psychological wellbeing followed by its negative association with negative emotions and emotional dissonance as dimensions of emotion work. Hierarchical multiple regressions analysis shows that emotion work as a strongest psychological predictor of psychological wellbeing. This study also highlights that psychological wellbeing as an important potential intrapersonal variable for the growth of an organization. Further implications of the study are discussed in the paper.