The association of emotional labor and workplace violence with health-related productivity loss

Objectives: This study explored the association of emotional labor and workplace violence with health-related productivity loss (HRPL).

Methods: We used the initial dataset from a survey known as the Korean Work, Sleep, and Health Study, an ongoing nationwide panel study initiated in 2022. To assess emotional labor, the study included 2386 workers who worked in customer service. The Korean Workplace Violence Scale-13 and the Korean Emotional Labour Scale-11 were used to assess the level of exposure to workplace violence, and the intensity of emotional labor, respectively. The Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire was used to measure HRPL, including absenteeism and presenteeism. We examined differences in HRPL based on workplace violence and emotional labor using generalized linear regression models.

Results: HRPL increased with an increase in workplace violence and emotional labor scores. Notably, the mean HRPL was highest in the high-risk groups for both workplace violence and emotional labor. The mean HRPL increased as the number of "high-risk" components for workplace violence and emotional labor increased. All the workplace violence and emotional labor components exhibited higher HRPL in the "high-risk" groups compared with the "low-risk" groups.

Conclusions: Our study showed that both emotional labor and workplace violence are associated with reduced productivity.