Emotional Labor in the Digital Workplace: A Study of Its Effects on Job Satisfaction Among Remote Professionals

Emotional Labor in the Digital Workplace: A Study of Its Effects on Job Satisfaction Among Remote Professionals

Raveendra K Wagh, Dr Premalatha Packirisamy

School of Management and Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.903SEDU0324

Received: 19 June 2025; Accepted: 21 June 2025; Published: 15 July 2025

ABSTRACT

In the post-pandemic world, remote work has become an essential part of the global professional landscape. Alongside the flexibility and autonomy, it offers, remote work introduces new challenges in emotional management and workplace communication. Emotional labour, traditionally associated with face-to-face service roles, is increasingly relevant in digitally mediated work environments. This conceptual paper explores the role of emotional labour in remote work settings and its potential influence on job satisfaction. By drawing from established emotional labour theories and contemporary studies on remote work, the paper aims to provide a theoretical framework that enhances understanding of emotional dynamics in virtual workplaces. It also discusses organizational implications and directions for future research.

Keyword: Surface acting, deep acting, remote work, job satisfaction, emotional labour, digital transformation, communication tool.

INTRODUCTION

The digitalization of the workplace has rapidly transformed how employees interact, express themselves, and experience work. The widespread adoption of remote work—accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic—has led to a reliance on virtual communication platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and email. While these tools offer convenience, they also require workers to manage their emotions in unique and sometimes taxing ways, often with less social support and increased surveillance. Emotional labor, previously studied mainly in customer service and healthcare settings, is now an integral component of the remote professional’s role. The transition from in-person to virtual interactions may intensify emotional dissonance, affect personal well-being, and ultimately influence job satisfaction. This paper seeks to conceptually examine the intersection of emotional labor and job satisfaction in remote work environments, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of digital-era workplace psychology.

With a more digitized and remote-first existence, the work itself has been dramatically altered, transforming not only how and where professionals work but also the affective dynamics inherent in their work. Emotional labour, coined by Hochschild, describes regulating and managing emotion to meet the emotional demands of work. This idea has been both argued for and argued against throughout history (Brook, 2009; Lopez, 2006), but continues to be a focal point in grasping how workers feel about work, especially in far-flung settings. As workers acclimatize to virtual workplaces, the responsibility of emotional management is not only perpetuated but, in many cases, amplified by technology-enabled communication, solitary confinement, and increased surveillance (Ogbonna & Harris, 2004; van Zoonen et al., 2021).

The remote work environment, particularly fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, requires constant adjustment and emotional strength (van Zoonen et al., 2021). Workers are mandated to exhibit empathy, enthusiasm, and interest over virtual media—without the bodily cues and feedback inherent in face-to-face communication. The disembodiment makes it difficult to perform emotional labour and, as such, impacts job satisfaction. Although older theories associated emotional labour with occupational health (De Castro et al., 2004), newer studies investigate its overlap with artificial intelligence (AI) and online surveillance, revealing a newer depth of intricacy within workplace emotional processes (Boyd & Andalibi, 2023; Fukumura et al., 2021). Newer technologies now possess the capability to sense, examine, and even forecast emotional levels based on automated systems (Bromuri et al., 2020; Henkel et al., 2020). Whereas such innovations hold the promise of aiding employees in stress management and improving customer interactions, they also threaten to amplify emotional monitoring and undermine authenticity in self-expression (Boehner et al., 2007). Such technologies redefine the way emotion is not just felt but commodified and managed in the virtual workplace.

Additionally, the emotional disalienation concept—emphasized in Brook’s (2009) critical review of Hochschild—becomes especially pertinent in remote work. The emotional dissonance between expressed and felt emotions can lead to dissatisfaction, burnout, and psychological detachment. Traditional models, like those offered by Gruenberg (1980), linking job satisfaction with intrinsic and extrinsic factors, now have to be reassessed against new digital and emotional demands. Therefore, the paper examines the development and significance of emotional labour in the digital workplace, specifically for remote professionals, and examines how such emotional dynamics shape job satisfaction. Based on a synthesis of sociological, technological, and psychological insights, the research seeks to shed light on the intercorporeal relationship between emotion, work, and well-being within a digitally mediated context.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Emotional Labor

Arlie Hochschild’s introduction of the term emotional labour has been crucial in explaining the regulation and performance of emotions in the workplace. Emotional labour, according to Hochschild, refers to the process that employees go through as they control their feelings to meet the emotional needs of the job, which may result in emotional dissonance and possible burnout. Paul Brook (2009) reaffirmed the persistent applicability of this theory by defending it against attacks that aimed to limit its applicability, instead contending for its critical utility in revealing the commodification of human emotion in capitalist labour relations. Brook’s subsequent work further located emotional labour within alienation politics, illustrating how workers become alienated from their own emotional expressions as feelings are commodified for organizational purposes (Brook, 2009).

Drawing upon Hochschild’s work, scholars such as Lopez (2006) built on the model by extending it to care-focused careers like nursing home labour. Lopez highlighted the organizational and systematic character of emotional care, situating it not merely as a personal task but as a systems aspect of workplace operation and culture. In the same vein, Ogbonna and Harris (2004) examined the expression of emotional labour in academe, observing how intensification of work among university teachers resulted in heightened levels of emotional exhaustion, particularly where emotional expectations were not commensurate with institutional support. With the emergence of telework, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, emotional labour is not reduced but has changed. Transition to online platforms has modified the expression and reception of emotions. van Zoonen et al. (2021) also captured how remote workers grappled with emotionally adapting to not being physically present, cementing the fact that emotional labour is now being done in virtual spaces. Having to stay visibly engaged, empathetic, and responsive through digital communication introduces new levels of emotional performance that are unseen but intensely draining.

Technological progress has further made the emotional experience at work more complex. As Boehner et al. (2007) identify, emotion is not an enduring fact—it is socially constructed, performed, and measurably increasing. Modern AI systems can currently identify stress and emotional signals in work interactions, as Bromuri et al. (2020) demonstrate the application of AI in predicting service agent stress based on emotion pattern recognition. Henkel et al. (2020) also went on to posit that such technologies, as much as they might be assistive, create a hybrid space where emotional labour is outsourced in part to machines, raising issues of authenticity and control. Incorporating automated emotion recognition within the workplace space also raises ethical and psychological issues. Boyd and Andalibi (2023) point out how such technologies have the potential to reshape future work arrangements, leading to heightened levels of surveillance and emotional standardization. Employees can be coerced into conforming their emotional expressions with algorithmic demands, such that emotional dissonance increases and job satisfaction declines.

From a health point of view, De Castro et al. (2004) highlighted that emotional labour has important consequences for occupational well-being, especially in the post-industrial setting in which emotional performance is typically required but inadequately supported. Since job satisfaction is related to both emotional fulfilment and recognition, traditional theories like those forwarded by Gruenberg (1980) remain valid. They highlight the need to connect personal emotional experiences with organizational demands to enhance well-being. As remote and artificial intelligence technologies mediate workplace interactions more and more, the theory of emotional labor needs to be recast in light of these changes. New tools—from emotion-sensing systems to hybrid human-AI collaborative platforms—are not only reshaping how work is done but also how emotional engagement is structured and evaluated (Fukumura et al., 2021; Guerrero et al., 2014). This evolution signals a critical need to revisit emotional labor theory to account for its expanding digital dimensions and their implications for job satisfaction, identity, and worker autonomy in the 21st-century workplace.

Emotional labor typically manifests in two primary forms:

• Surface Acting: Displaying expected emotions without actually feeling them (e.g., smiling during a video meeting despite feeling stressed).
• Deep Acting: Attempting to genuinely feel the emotions one is expected to display, thus reducing emotional dissonance.

A cornerstone of Hochschild’s theory of emotional labor is the difference between surface acting and deep acting, two methods people use to control their emotions in accordance with organizational norms. Surface acting is the showing of emotions that are not authentically experienced—basically, faking feelings—and deep acting is changing inner feelings to actually match anticipated emotional expressions. This differentiation is pivotal in accounting for the impact of emotional labor on workers’ psychological health and job satisfaction. Brook (2009) came to the defense of Hochschild’s theory of surface and deep acting, noting that such expressions of emotional management unveil the capitalist labor systems’ commodification of human emotion. He explained that surface acting tends to result in emotional dissonance, where there is a gap between experienced emotions and expressed emotions, which may lead to alienation and psychological tension. Deep acting, while being seen as more genuine, also requires great emotional effort and can even lead to burnout in the long run when done continually without organizational backing (Brook, 2009).

Among care work, Lopez (2006) demonstrated how surface and deep acting operate in emotionally challenging contexts like nursing homes. Employees commonly practice deep acting to offer empathetic care, internalizing empathy to reach out genuinely to residents. But when deep acting becomes institutionalized and routine without sufficient emotional recovery or acknowledgment, it can make the distinction between real care and emotional compliance imposed by others lose ground to emotional exhaustion. Ogbonna and Harris (2004) observed the same trends in academics, especially among lecturers in UK universities. Their research indicated that rising performance demands and managerial pressure caused lecturers to practice surface acting in teaching and administrative interactions. This disconnect between internal sentiment and external display was cited as a cause of dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion, particularly when emotional effort was not rewarded or recognized.

The workplace health effects of surface and deep acting have been further explained by De Castro, Agnew, and Fitzgerald (2004). They pointed out that frequent surface acting, in particular, can erode emotional well-being and result in chronic mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Their findings affirm integrating the emotional labor theory into occupational health practice, especially in post-industrial societies where emotional labor has become a defining feature of work in the majority of service and knowledge-based professions. In summary, the two surface and deep acting processes are central to explaining emotional labor’s impact on remote professionals in the digital workplace. As professionals navigate virtual communications and greater calls for emotional performance, such strategies become more complex and challenging. While deep acting may foster more genuine relationships and work satisfaction when in alignment with personal values, surface acting, especially if habitual and unsupported, can lead to emotional dissonance, alienation, and reduced well-being. It is important to identify and address these dynamics in order to facilitate sustainable emotional labor practice and improve job satisfaction in virtual work settings.

Job Satisfaction in Remote Work

Job satisfaction is an employee’s affective and cognitive assessment of his or her work experiences. It includes perceived value, autonomy, interpersonal relations, and correspondence with personal aims. Satisfaction in remote locations is determined by flexibility, quality of digital communication, and emotional experiences in the workplace. Emotional demands of remote work will enhance or reduce job satisfaction. Whereas some workers might appreciate the independence of emotional management within an enclosed environment, others might feel emotionally isolated, surveilled, or misinterpreted. Emotional labor—left unacknowledged—can deteriorate psychological satisfaction and well-being in the long run.

The digital media themselves affect the experience of emotional labor. For example, video calls can reinforce surface acting by virtue of exposure given continuously, whereas asynchronous media (e.g., emails) can facilitate greater emotional management. The level of formality, synchronicity, and visibility in digital tools all contribute to the emotional experience of remote professionals. Job satisfaction working remotely is moderated by an intricate mix of emotional, technological, and organizational considerations. With the nature of work converting to digital and virtual modes, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era, emotional labor has acquired new dimensions directly influencing the manner in which remote professionals feel and experience satisfaction in their work. Emotional demands of telework—frequently heightened by technological mediation, minimal face-to-face interaction, and eroded work-life distinctions—need constant adjustment and emotional regulation.

Lopez (2006) provides essential understanding of how structured emotional care supports the emotional stability and satisfaction of care workers, which has its equivalents in telework where stable emotional performance is needed even when separated by physical distance. Emotional labour in virtual settings, while less overtly structured, requires the same sort of care and emotional availability, particularly in service or cooperative jobs. Without nurturing structures, this emotional labor can decrease job satisfaction. Van Zoonen et al. (2021) established that with the transition to remote work, employees experienced challenges and opportunities that influenced their job satisfaction. As autonomy and flexibility grew for a select few, others grappled with emotional disconnection, absence of feedback, and the challenge of sustaining interpersonal relationships. Such emotional demands—tacit and oftentimes unobserved—demand effortful emotional regulation and therefore may constitute a large part of job satisfaction, or its decline, in virtual workplaces.

Technological mediation also makes emotional expression and measurement more challenging in virtual workplaces. Boehner et al. (2007) also warn against viewing emotion as a thing that can be objectively measured, and argue instead that emotion is constructed and contextual. This means automatic systems that attempt to “read” employees’ emotions are bound to misunderstand or overreduce employees’ experiences, and thus disengage or produce distrust. Boyd and Andalibi (2023) extend this risk, warning that employment use of AI emotion recognition can not only influence emotional realities but also produce surveillance settings that can wear away worker autonomy and job satisfaction. Bromuri et al. (2020) and Henkel et al. (2020) depict the potential of AI systems to recognize stress and support emotion regulation in service contexts, including remote work. While such systems deliver supportive interventions, they also institute a novel dynamic under which machines mediate emotional labor. If those instruments are deployed without attention to workers’ emotional autonomy and agency, they could even increase emotional exhaustion rather than abate it. However, if deployed judiciously, they can enhance job satisfaction by reducing the cognitive and emotional load on remote professionals.

Fukumura et al. (2021) found that workers are complex in their views about AI implementation in the workplace. Although some are optimistic regarding AI-facilitated emotion monitoring and collaboration, others fear depersonalization and emotional thinness. Such sentiments have tangible implications on the level of job satisfaction because workers value environments that recognize emotional complexity and provide authentic, human-sensitive assistance rather than algorithmic impersonality. Classic conceptions of job satisfaction remain valid. Gruenberg (1980) noted that job satisfaction is not only dependent on circumstances outside but also on the congruence between individual values and organizational requirements. With telework, where the conventional cues to commitment and affection are absent or mediated through technology, this congruence becomes more essential. Employees who perceive their emotional labor as worthy and highly maintained tend to have greater job satisfaction.

Finally, new technologies such as those introduced by Guerrero et al. (2014) aim to have smart systems that support—but do not substitute—human decision-making and emotional intelligence. With knowledge-based systems and emotional intelligence, they can not only improve task performance but the emotional climate of remote work and boost satisfaction and resilience. Overall, remote job satisfaction rests heavily on the management, experience, and support of emotional labor through organizational practices and technological systems. To deal with the subtle emotional life of remote workers and balance automation with human care is essential to promote satisfaction, well-being, and long-term engagement in the digital workplace.

 EMOTIONAL LABOR IN THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE

The Rise of Digital Emotional Expectations

In remote environments, employees are often expected to display continuous professionalism, responsiveness, and positivity. These expectations are amplified by camera-on meetings, team collaboration platforms, and real-time messaging, which can blur the lines between work and personal life.

Amplification of Surface Acting

Remote professionals may engage in surface acting more frequently due to constant digital visibility and the need to project productivity and engagement. This may contribute to emotional exhaustion and strain, particularly when employees must suppress their authentic emotional states for prolonged periods.

Deep Acting in Virtual Contexts

Deep acting may become a protective strategy in virtual work. Employees who authentically engage with colleagues and align personal values with organizational goals may find it easier to manage emotional labor. However, the lack of physical cues and social support could make deep acting more difficult to sustain.

CONCEPTUAL INTEGRATION

This research study suggests a conceptual connection between job satisfaction and emotional labor in remote workplaces. The connection is influenced by:

• The form of emotional labor used (surface vs. deep acting).
• The frequency and type of digital communication.
• The person’s capacity to emotionally self-regulate in a virtual workplace.
• Organizational leadership support and culture in virtual workplaces.

These factors come together to create a dynamic emotional landscape in remote working environments that demands fresh focus from organizational psychologists, human resource specialists, and virtual team leaders.

The conceptual model above outlines the contribution of emotional labor—surface acting and deep acting—to the formation of emotional exhaustion and, by extension, job satisfaction of remote professionals. Here, surface acting (emotional faking) and deep acting (actually feeling and showing emotions) are two major emotional strategies employed by remote workers. Both are found to impact emotional exhaustion that serves as a mediating factor. Surface acting is typically linked with heightened emotional fatigue from the discrepancy between the emotions one feels and the emotions displayed, while deep acting can potentially mitigate this discrepancy. The digital communication environment—with technologies like video conferencing, instant messaging, and email—is proposed as a contextual moderator. It influences the frequency and intensity of emotional labor since it shapes the expression and perception of emotions in remote workplaces. For example, unlimited video meetings would increase the pressure to display positive emotions, thereby augmenting surface acting and emotional exhaustion. Finally, job satisfaction is the main outcome measure. Emotional exhaustion, which is a result of prolonged emotional labor, negatively impacts remote workers’ satisfaction with their job. The theory highlights that despite the inevitability of emotional labor in virtual work environments, its quality and physical environment significantly contribute to whether emotional labor improves or betrays workers’ wellbeing.

DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Future studies of emotional labor in the virtual workplace need to make a deliberate attempt to examine how much virtual environments affect emotional experiences and then how such impressions trickle down and influence job satisfaction of teleworking professionals. To begin with, longitudinal studies should be conducted to determine how much extended exposure to teleworking affects emotional labor. This entails investigating whether remote employees accumulate new patterns of emotional adaptation or cumulative emotional burnout, and how these processes intersect with different levels of job satisfaction. Second, future research needs to investigate differential effects of emotional labor within remote work industries like tech, health, education, and customer service. Industry-based studies can uncover sector-specific emotional demands and provide context-specific emotional support strategies. Additionally, this comparison to complete remote work allows one to appreciate how differing levels of physical distance can shape emotional regulation and well-being.

Third, with AI and emotion recognition technologies now common in virtual workplaces, subsequent studies should examine the ethical concerns, validity, and psychological impacts of the former. Examining the influence of these technologies on self-reports of autonomy, emotional genuineness, and organizational trust will become critical to establishing their role in influencing job satisfaction. Additionally, there is a need for more representative studies to be conducted in an attempt to capture diversity in remote workers’ experience. Gender, cultural identity, caregiving responsibilities, and socio-economic standing are aspects that may shape one’s feeling of emotional labor as well as its management. Intersectional strategies can help identify groups that are most likely to be disproportionately impacted by remote work’s emotional intensities and may benefit most from more targeted interventions.

Lastly, there is a need for future research to examine organizational processes and leadership styles that can successfully counterbalance the adverse effects of emotional labor. Examples of such research are explorations of the function of online communication culture, emotional support networks, virtual team functioning, and training workshops for emotional resilience building. Such exploration can yield evidence-based recommendations for those organizations desiring to create healthier and fulfilling telecommuting atmospheres. Follow-up studies should adopt a multidisciplinary, context-sensitive, and ethics-informed methodology to research the developing field of emotional labor in the online workplace and factors of job satisfaction.

CONCLUSION

Emotional labor in the virtual work environment is now a significant job satisfaction predictor for telecommuting professionals. As distinctions between work and home life dissolve in virtual work environments, the need for coercive emotional management—often invisible but with profoundly significant effects—is stronger than ever. This research has examined how digitalization of work reconfigures classical emotional labor processes, especially surface and deep acting, and how these changes can influence employees’ job satisfaction, motivation, and health. The convergence of artificial intelligence and emotion-sensing technology infuses another layer of complexity with facilitative potential as well as fresh challenges to emotional authenticity and agency. Even though telecommuting has the potential to provide flexibility and autonomy that ensure job satisfaction, it may lead to emotional exhaustion if employees do not receive proper social contact, respect, and support from the organization. Identification of emotional labor in this new arena is critical to maintaining a satisfied and resilient telecommuting workforce. As more organizations become dependent on digital infrastructures, it becomes a need to create emotionally intelligent offices that are attentive not only to productivity but also to the emotional lives of remote professionals.

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