Emotional Labor in Job Evaluation: Redesigning Compensation Practices

Abstract

Few client-oriented organizations compensate those who perform emotional labor. Traditional job evaluation systems, used by employers to construct a wage hierarchy, fail to recognize the value of emotional labor. Through the pay equity movement, this bias was identified. This article offers a technical attempt to design a new job content questionnaire and evaluation framework that measure the actual tasks, activities, and situations in which incumbents of differentially female jobs perform emotional labor. Four general dimensions of emotional labor are discussed: human relations skills, communication skills, emotional effort, and responsibility for client well-being. These instruments offer the most detailed measurement of the components of emotional labor available and represent a starting point for refinement of this increasingly important type of work.