Emotional Labor

In this paper, I will explore the cost of emotional labor to caregivers. Today, the cost of emotional labor is still under research. For a caregiver who provides personal care to clients, this cost can be high. Emotional labor leads to burnout, job jumping, and yes, even bad attitudes.

When a caregiver loves performing her job and seeing her clients, she is more likely to channel deep acting as emotional labor. If the caregiver cannot empathize and apply some emotion in his life to the situation at hand, then surface acting as emotional labor is much more likely to lead to job dissatisfaction and retention problems. As noted by Brotheridge and Lee in Emotions of Managing, emotional labor can be a problem for workers who come into direct

Emotional dissonance can present as high turnover and unhappiness in one’s day-to-day tasks. Miller goes on to observe that asking an employee to show feelings she or he does not have inside can be a negative situation for some workers. Caregivers who have Empathic Concern improve Communicative Responsiveness whereas Emotional Contagion reduced Communicative Responsiveness, as shown in Figure 11.2 from the text, Organizational Communication

As the interviewee and I sit and go through the job description, I tell them that the supervisor will go over individualized parts of the job on the care plan with them. The care plan will tell them when the specific client needs a shower, when to go grocery shopping, and what household chores need to be done. We talk about the care plan, how it is basically a list of what the supervisor has assessed that the client needs. One of the most important things that are stressed however is the fact that - if it is not on the care plan, you can’t do it.

So, think about that for a minute, that we are telling the caregiver to take care of the client, follow the instructions and do your job well. However, are we telling them about the emotional investment they must put forth? Unless a personal care attendant is experienced, there is no way they can expect this drain on their psyche. As asserted by Evashwick and Riedel in Managing Long-Term Care, there must be adequate training of all new employees along with orientation and mentoring before starting their job. This includes preparation for what they should expect emotionally.

Table 1 illustrates the reassuring persona that the caregiver must project to the client in order to foster trust. It also shows that this role must include good training for personal care attendants so that they can incorporate emotional care for their clients along