Wellbeing at Work

Understanding Display Rules & Emotional Labour at Work: Cost, Consequences, and Coping Strategies

Imagine you work as a barista at Starbucks. A customer walks in on a bright sunny morning, eagerly anticipating your warm welcome, the comforting aroma of freshly brewed coffee, and your excited request for their name – which per pre-established rules, is always hand-written on the renowned coffee cup. However, that day you wake up feeling off, and show up to work as your true self – an individual battling different kinds of life stressors. You decide not to greet the client, you refrain from engaging in small talk, and avoid taking their name.

The customer looks up at you and asks: “Is something wrong?”

This scenario highlights the significance and ever-so-faint yet important presence of display rules and emotional labour in workers’ lives.

Women, Work, and COVID-19: Why We Need To Rely On Sisterhood More Than Ever

2020 has been a year unlike any other. While the impact of the COVID-19 crisis is horizontal in a certain way (United Nations, 2020), as it affects the worldwide population from an economic, social and political aspect, it’s abundantly clear that it hits each one of us differently.

The impact of Covid-19 turns out to be worse for those who simply belong to certain categories: students of any age, fresh graduates, people living in underprivileged contexts, jobseekers, women (UN Women, 2020a). Being part of some of the above categories myself, I would say that I am quite used to feeling uncertain. We, people in our almost thirties (Hoffower, 2019) are living one of the hardest crises the world ever faced in the last few decades. But we also happen to be familiar with changes, agility, precariousness, not having long-term expectations: it’s just the ordinary for us. And yet, it is still hard to find daily motivation and cope with all of this. In many ways, knowing that we’re all in this together consoles me, and relying on people around me, especially other women, makes me feel better.

4 Things You Should Know Before Becoming An Expat

Moving abroad for work can be a great career move, but those that have been on an international assignment before know that the expat life is not as easy or luxurious as it looks on the outside.

My first job in HR was in International Mobility, but that’s not where I gained my knowledge on expatriation. Above my professional and educational experiences, it’s my personal life experiences that have made me knowledgeable in the field. I started moving abroad when I was only 2 years old because of my family’s professional life and became what is known in the relocation world as a “Third Culture Kid.” By the time I was 25, I had switched cities, countries & continents 10 times, often going back and forth between them.

10 Ways HR Professionals Can Help Protect Employee Mental Health

Last year, I presented a Human Resources research project on wellbeing in the future of work and its impact on the HR function. When I reflected on the fact that this topic would gain importance in the future of work, and for the HR function in particular, I never would have imagined that “the future” was only a couple of months ahead. Fast forward time to the first months of 2020, and we are all seeing HR professionals and business leaders gain interest in wellbeing at work due to the side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The positive consequences of taking care of employee’s mental health have been documented in thousands of research papers and academic books of psychological sciences and other related fields for many years. Despite this, it’s still one of the last remaining taboos of the world of work. Improving wellbeing & mental health at work has always been, and will always be, a very important aspect to keeping an organisation and its workforce healthy and efficient, even in the worst of times.