Is it ever ok for staff to show emotion in the workplace?

As an HR professional it is a given that you will encounter a lot of emotions from staff, whether they are the excited moments when someone is promoted, or tells you they are having a baby, to the tears of redundancy, or the anger when someone is facing discipline.

When you work with people, feelings are a part of the job. But managing them is a constant ebb and flow. For you as an HR leader or professional, it’s about managing emotions and how they manifest themselves – from tears or even tantrums to those who are less able to open up when you need them to.

It’s impossible for anyone to never show any emotion – it’s just what we do as humans. Even celebrities might cry during an interview – as happened with actor Stephen Graham recently.

Showing emotion at work used to be seen as a negative thing, with people hiding in the toilets and crying, for example, or heading off on their lunchbreak to have an angry stomp around a local park.