Discuss the impact of emotional labour on front line service workers. What factors might influence this impact?

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Discuss the impact of emotional labour on front line service workers.

What factors might influence this impact?

Front Line Service Workers (FLSW) interact directly with customers, in service organisations. In this interaction, he will have to perform emotional labour. Emotional labour is that work performed by the FLSW who displays his emotions and feelings in the organisation’s desired orientation (Morris, Feldman 1997). This concept differentiated between the organisation’s expectations on emotional display and employees’ actual experienced emotions.

Emotional Labour has repercussions upon the management, the customer and, no doubt, the employee himself- the performer of emotional labour. Hochschild (1983), who coined the term emotional labour, would emphasise in the FLSW being required to induce or suppress feelings, to sustain this apparent orientation. She states this brings about a number of negative impacts upon the employee, without any benefits. Many other researchers, and empirical data, would suggest a contrary notion as there are positive impacts.

The negative and positive impacts upon the FLSW are presented below, and how they come about. This is followed by the contingent factors that could enhance or alleviate these impacts.

The emphasis on emotional labour has in part come about to maintain a differential edge. The competitive advantage gained from low costs and prices and high product quality, is increasingly being eroded away. Yet its importance is still crucial as it is considered as a given.

Emotional labour is carried out in many ways. Emotional Harmony (Rafaeli, Sutton 1987, Ashforth, Humphrey 1993) is the expression of genuine emotions, in which the FLSW’s true feelings are in line with the display rules. ‘A nurse who feels sympathetic at the sight of an injured child has no need act’ (Ashforth, Humphrey, 1993, pg94).The nurse will not feel having been taken advantaged of, used or feel bad. In fact, as she will be able help the child, be sympathetic and be herself, she is more likely to enjoy her work, a positive impact from the performance of emotional labour. Schuler, Sypher (2000) would call this emotional labour the provision of an altruistic service. The sense of gratification is a psychological benefit to the FLSW and can act as a reason for being a FLSW, or as an alleviator of pain suffered during the course of work or otherwise. A real estate agent (Schuler, Sypher 2000) explained: ‘It’s exciting when I know I’ve helped somebody or helped an officer. Um, it helps me.’

Customers, based on their liking and the societal norms (Rafaeli, Sutton 1987), have a certain degree of expectations on the level and quality of service provided to them by organisation. Organisations thus have an inclination to have their employees and FLSW to have this orientation towards them. Emotional Dissonance (Rafaeli, Sutton 1987) is the portrayal of emotion that is aligned with the feeling rules of the organisation. This central concept is ‘analogous to the principle of cognitive dissonance’ (Hochschild, 1983, pg90) where, as opposed to emotional harmony, the worker’s true feelings are not in parallel with the emotions exhibited. This concept can incorporate both Surface Acting and Deep Acting. It was in Hochschild’s view that these two ways were the only methods of performing emotional labour.

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Surface acting refers to the FLSW acting in its most literal sense. They are pretending to smile and pretending to show empathy to the customer. This is the case where Hochschild’s definition of emotional labour fits in perfectly. Staff at the Sheraton is instructed to smile, be hospitable to them, and speak to them in particular acceptable ways (Boella, 1996, cited in Korczynski 2002). If the service worker’s frame of mind, or for another reason, is not in conjunction with this requirement, he may not only be unable to execute the job at hand well, but will feel emotionally exhausted ...

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