For anyone who has worked in customer service related areas knows that faking emotions can be draining. Sometimes our employers require use to display or control our true emotions. Chau, Dahling, Levy, and Diefendorff (2009) investigated the degree to which surface acting influences emotional exhaustion and ultimately turnover intentions. Surface acting refers to people refraining from displaying their actual emotions. Instead, they portray emotions that the job demands. Results of this study indicate that when employees decrease amounts of surface acting on the job, emotional exhaustion and turnover significantly decrease as well.

Although decreasing the amount of faking emotions does provide positive results, there are some jobs that require surface acting. Jobs that require caring for others such as nurses necessitate the nurse to portray a positive emotion in light of difficult situations.

So what can organizations do to help employees? One of the most effective solutions is for organizations to provide emotional regulation training for employees. Providing employees with coping mechanisms can allow employees to effectively handle daily surface acting. Training employees is also beneficial for employers. Because many organizations are customer-service related, employees directly communicating with customers define whether the organization will be successful or not. With proper training, organizations can increase customer satisfaction leading to overall success. The goals of the majority of emotional training sessions are:

•       Regulate negative emotions that lead to violent behavior
•       Help clients to build skills to respond better to any challenges
•       Prevent abuse of loved ones
•       Connect more effectively with angry, abusive, and aggressive clients
•       Understand emotional regulation

How do you deal with faking emotions at work? Do you think employees would benefit from emotional regulation training?


Read more blogs at TNS Employee Insights In the Jungle : http://www.tnsemployeeinsights.com/en_US/tns-blog/

Reference:
Chau, S., Dahling, J., Levy, P., & Diefendorff, J. (2009). A predictive study of emotional labor and turnover. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30, 1151-1163.