Definition of Emotions

Question:

Discuss about the Emotions In The Workplace And Its Effects.

Personal emotions and feelings can have significant and long-lasting impacts upon the performance of an employee in the organization. Emotions can be defined as a strong feeling that a person feels in certain specific situations, circumstances or from the relationship with another person. Emotions are heavily influenced by the mood of a person and can vary significantly within a very short span of time. Emotions are among the defining traits of a human being and are made up of the feelings of a person rather than her or his thoughts (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2002). An employee’s overall emotions and temperament have significant effects upon the person’s decision making skills, leadership and performance in general. Interpersonal relationships among the employees also gets affected by the emotions that a person is feeling (Demerouti, Bakker & Halbesleben 2015). However important are the emotions of the employee, they are almost always overlooked by the senior management or seldom discussed about the negative impacts of emotions on the productivity of the employees. This situation must be changed immediately and more emphasis must be put on the psychological wellbeing of an employee. There are several ways and strategies that can be adopted to make sure that the employees are giving their best and no emotional externalities are creating any problems for their work (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2002). Employees are often required to provide for mental and physical services that are not part of their regular duties. In such cases, employees have to put in extra efforts. The following paper looks into the various aspects of emotion of a person and how may that be related to the workplace. Every person is faced with different conditions and situations in the workplace and this can severely affect the mood of the person, leading her or him to feel in many different ways. These moods and emotions, in turn, can affect the productivity levels of the employees at the workplace in either positive or negative manner, which is going to be discussed in the current paper along with the concepts of emotional labour.

Employees are often burdened with the extra duties by the organisation itself or due to certain situations that may arise suddenly at the workplace, which may require them to feel strong emotions and this may also have effects on their behaviour. Such “emotional labour” can have seriously harmful effects on employees (Ashkanasy & Daus, On Hochschild 2002). The following discussion looks into the emotional aspects of the employees and tries to establish a connection between the workplace productivity of an employee. Furthermore, the discussion also delves deeper into the aspect of how emotion affects the workplace productivity of the employees. The discussion uses the concepts of affective events theory (AET), that tries to explain the connections between emotions that an employee feels in the workplace and the level of job performances. It is a cause-effect relationship that is designed to portray the effects of job environment, the nature of the job and its demands and the required nature of emotional labour on the employee performance. Moreover, daily issues related to work and the current mood of the employee may also have positive or negative effects on the employees. Motivations of a person often decide how will the person behave and how effective will the results of the employee’s actions be for the benefit of the organization. It has been observed that an organization which has relaxed and mentally stable employees, who experience positive emotions, generate better profit results (Barsade & Gibson, 2007). Most organizations rely on a strict work culture and norm, which is always making its decisions based on the market condition and not being more customer-oriented. A growing quantity of psychological researches has shown that this market condition focused decision making may actually be harmful to the organizations and it may have negative impacts on the productivity of the employees as opposed to helping them to work better. On the other hand, positivity and positive emotions are sure to bring better results for the organizations which look after the mental wellbeing of their employees as well as ensuring their physical safety (Diefendorff, Croyle & Gosserand, 2005). What most companies fail to understand is that, even though pressure and stress can indeed help employees to perform well, for some time, the harms of it are immense and the long-term effects of these can prove to be negatively effective.

Impact of Emotions on Employee Performance

Every employee of an organization has the ability to contribute to the organizational operations in either a positive or a negative way. It is essential for organizations to ensure that their employees can work in a stress-free, relaxed environment. It is a fact that the organization cannot possibly control or contain the personal problems that an employee faces or any issues that are related to the employee’s family (Gibson & Callister, 2010).

Feeling different emotions at work is inevitable and is a common thing for every employee. For this matter, it is normal that they would also be experiencing a surge of emotions every once in a while as well (H?lsheger & Schewe, 2011). These emotions need to be channelized and made sure that only the productive parts of these emotions are put to use by the employees so that they can the most beneficial for the organisation from which both the parties can gain something. With negative emotions, there may be some serious problems that are faced by the stakeholders of any company. It is not only the employees themselves who are affected by the negative aspects of emotional labor, but entire teams and even the whole organisation may be adversely affected (Judge, Woolf & Hurst, 2009). Positive and negative emotions must be kept at a balance, so that none of these have overwhelming effect on the employee. It must be remembered that no emotion in abundance can be good for anyone. With this in mind, both the aspects of emotions have to be maintained properly. Even too much positive emotions can cause harm to the employees by making more chances for employee exploitation.

Every human being experiences different emotions. In most cases, these emotions are not revealed fully to others, some parts of those are always kept secrets as they are extremely personal. Deep acting is often described to explain these situations, where a person is thinking specifically and is focused upon a single emotion particularly. Deep acting can be disastrous when the basic emotions that are being felt by the employee are negative (Ashkanasy, Ayoko & Jehn 2014). This would even effect how the employee behaves with, or treats, the customers as well as interactions with the people in the workplace. However, still, most of the time, people do not project these inner emotions or feelings to everyone around them. Most people try to hide their own emotions to meet some benchmarks and conform to a few social and work rules, which would cause hindrance in their lives if are not met with. Surface acting can mean that an individual is suppressing his or her true emotions and how the person feels only because the societal norms dictate so (Humphrey Ashforth & Diefendorff 2015). These repressed feelings can lead to a gradual worsening mental condition for people and may cause something that may not at all be anticipated either by the individual her/himself or the employer.

Emotional Labor

Gender stereotyping the employees by having established notions within the organization that portray only the women as the emotionally vulnerable ones can lead to being blind to the obvious factors which are present in front of the eyes. It even makes the organizational management boards to overlook serious issues simply because it does not fit their own perception about emotions and feelings (Ashkanasy, Ayoko & Jehn 2014). If these problems are not addressed properly, the organization can never hope to achieve the desired milestones that are set by the ideologies of the company.

With positive emotions being the dominant attribute of the feelings of a person, the employee can witness better creativity and managerial skills at work and even enhance their regular productivity. with better and positive emotions, the employees can also garnet positive social support from the other colleagues and the senior management of the organization, which is a significant driver for the motivation of the employee (Seo & Barrett, 2007). If the organization give recognition to the efforts of an employee and also rewards the same person for the work, there is a fair chance that that employee will be willing to work even harder in the future because of the rewards. Broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions can be used in this case to further establish the better results that can be derived from positive emotions at the workplace over the negative ones. This theory suggests that positive emotions help a person to become a better employee by enhanced actions that are aimed towards the betterment of the self and the organisation (Gibson & Callister, 2010).

Employees have often been recorded to complain about how customers treat them. On busy days, when the pressure is immense on every employee, a witty customer who tries to be over-smart with humour may actually be taking up a lot of time, making it difficult for the employee to serve the other customers properly and meeting their needs. This may result in a lot of frustration for the employees and their productivity may be adversely affected by this. The airline industry has to face employee dissatisfaction on a regular basis. The airhosts and hostesses have to deal with various customers and some their behaviours often make it difficult for the employees to remain calm and work as they are required to (Williams, 2003). It is vital that they keep their emotions under control and continue with their job roles so that the company reputation is not hampered.

Affective Events Theory

There are some mechanisms that the organizations choose to make sure that emotions and negative feelings do not cause any disruptions at work. Organizations have to have a system and a work culture that helps the employees to feel relaxed and work without much pressure. Organizations must take steps and create certain corrective measures that would help to reduce the stress and emotion related problems in the workplace as much as possible (Williams, 2003). Some of these mechanisms are: Neutralising, Buffering, Prescribing, Normalising

Through these steps and measures, the organizations try to understand the nature of the emotion of the employees after successfully understanding which of the employees are suffering from problems, which are emotional. They try to prevent the magnitudes and impacts of the emotions that cannot be avoided by any means. They help effectively separate emotions from work, successfully help the employees to express their emotions by taking some organization prescribed methods as well as be able to alter the negative feelings that the employee feels which are triggered by adverse emotions (Shockley et al. 2012).

It is not enough for the organization itself to try to prevent the problems that are caused by negative emotions of the employees. Organisations must be able to make sure that the employees are not being buried with extra burden at the workplace and can still work efficiently for the company despite having personal problems (Sy, Côté & Saavedra, 2005). The employees have to understand the fact that a contractual labour is a binding norm and the employee is sort of obligated to execute the tasks that are given by the organization. Whatever may be the personal problems an individual is facing, it has to be kept aside and the person has to adhere to the organizational norms and conform to the rules and regulations (Ashkanasy, Ayoko & Jehn 2014). The employees can themselves identify the potential triggers for the emotional instability and try to keep those under control so that they do not become a serious problem with their work productivity and bring down the entire operations output of the organization itself.

It is not enough for the organisation itself to try to prevent the problems that are caused by negative emotions of the employees, rather coping with the sudden stress and tricky situations have to be devised by the employees themselves. Regulating the emotions must be attempted and achieved by the employees, so that their work is not hampered. Organisations must be able to make sure that the employees are not being buried with extra burden at the workplace and can still work efficiently for the company despite having personal problems (Sy, Côté & Saavedra, 2005). The employees have to understand the fact that a contractual labour is a binding norm and the employee is sort of obligated to execute the tasks that are given by the organisation. Whatever may be the personal problems an individual is facing, it has to be kept aside and the person has to adhere to the organisational norms and conform to the rules and regulations (Ashkanasy, Ayoko & Jehn 2014). The employees can themselves identify the potential triggers for the emotional instability and try to keep those under control so that they do not become a serious problem with their work productivity and bring down the entire operations output of the organisation itself.

Conclusion

From the above discussion it is clear that the emotions of the employees have significant influences upon how will their productivity be. Positive emotions help to increase the same and negative emotions bring productivity levels down. Organizations must ensure that the employees do not experience any sort of emotional pressure and can work in peace. The organization and the employees both have to work on how to manage the pressure so that they can all work together and the different strategies for that also have to studied and implemented properly.

References

Ashkanasy, N.M., Ayoko, O.B. & Jehn, K.A., (2014). Understanding the physical environment of work and employee behavior: An affective events perspective. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(8), pp.1169-1184.

Demerouti, E., Bakker, A.B. & Halbesleben, J.R., (2015). Productive and counterproductive job crafting: A daily diary study. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 20(4), pp.457-469.

Ashkanasy, N. M., & Daus, C. S. (2002). Emotion in the workplace: The new challenge for managers. The Academy of Management Executive, 16(1), 76-86.

Barsade, S. G., & Gibson, D. E. (2007). Why does affect matter in organizations? Academy of Management Perspectives, 21(1), 36-59.

Diefendorff, J. M., Croyle, M. H., & Gosserand, R. H. (2005). The dimensionality and antecedents of emotional labour strategies. Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 66(2), 339-357.

Gibson, D. E., & Callister, R. R. (2010). Anger in organizations: Review and integration. Journal of Management, 36(1), 66-93.

H?lsheger, U. R., & Schewe, A. F. (2011). On the costs and benefits of emotional labor: A meta-analysis of three decades of research. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 16(3), 361-389.

Judge, T. A., Woolf, E. F., & Hurst, C. (2009). Is emotional labor more difficult for some than for others? A multilevel, experience-sampling study. Personnel Psychology, 62(1), 57-88.

Seo, M-G., & Barrett, L. F. (2007). Being emotional during decision making – good or bad? An empirical investigation. Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 923-940.

Shockley, K. M., Ispas, D., Rossi, M. E., & Levine, E. L. (2012). A meta-analytic investigation of the relationship between state affect, discrete emotions, and job performance. Human Performance, 25(5), 377-411.

Sy, T., Côté, S., & Saavedra, R. (2005). The contagious leader: Impact of the leader’s mood on the mood of group members, group affective tone, and group processes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(2), 295-305.

Williams, C. (2003). Sky service: The demands of emotional labour in the airline industry. Gender, Work & Organization, 10(5), 513-550.