Emotional Labor in the Hospitality Industry
Customer service, regardless of venue, albeit clinical, retail, collections, telemarketing, or hospitality, is one on the most difficult employment areas within which to be employed. Servicing people requires the service agent to be respectful, courteous, ethical, and have the ability to resolve problems, enquiries and/or complaints as quickly and expeditiously as possible at all times. Customer service representatives in all fields must be extremely cooperative in the face of adversity, competition, resistance, and sometimes degradation. Those who choose to be employed in a customer service related field are confronted on a daily basis with a myriad of diverse personalities, customs, ethnic profiles, and cultural differences. Service personnel are, therefore, the vanguards and frontline doughboys of the service world battle. Because of the continuous and mounting pressure put on service personnel it is no wonder that employment turnover and burnout is constantly high with attitudes amongst employees oftentimes running amuck. The required skill of emotion labor is generally not recognizable by customer or employer, as both entities have removed themselves from the frontlines of customer service. The remainder of this paper will focus, therefore, on a critical analysis of the emotional labor skill as a forgotten entity.
The emotional labor phenomenon in psychology is a complex process to understand when attempting to explain something that is yet to be recognized by occupational therapists, psychologists, social workers, or business professionals. Emotional labor, as a skill, can best be defined as the being able to emotionally engage and/or detach from a situation pursuit of excellent customer service (Ohlson, 2004). Further, the concept of emotional labor cannot be defined without adding the construct of emotional work to the definition. Both emotional labor and emotional work are intricately combined to form what is generally termed as value related job requirements. Knowing that all labor is emotional, what separates the novice from the artist is the emotion tied to the work. Therefore, individuals who are not emotionally connected to their job leave their most valuable attribute outside the service situation (Hei-Lin Chu, 2002). Connectivity is a behavioral construct often referred to as emotional intelligence or as define by Gardner (1983) as interpersonal intelligence. According to Gardner emotional intelligence is the relationship between one's inner self-feelings and the outward display of appropriate or inappropriate emotion. This is singularly important to hospitality workers as they must always be alert to that which they feel and that which is an appropriate display of emotion when dealing with a guest. The level of an employee's emotional maturity, social skill development, interpersonal competence, and awareness is vital the effectiveness of pristine guest service. Without these competencies the guest receives service, which is substandard and costly to the employer.
In order to maximize the quality of offered guest services there exists a need for both employer and employee to recognize the value of emotional labor. One without the other is akin to the "blind leading the blind." To this end both sides must be acutely aware of the ingredients of emotional labor, namely, worker respect, responsibility, understanding, fear, satisfaction, empathy, resentment, depression, guilt, and even anger. All too often, in the hospitality industry, employees are given little respect in terms of the job they perform. Managers often view those who wait tables, check coats, set up banquet halls, and serve drinks as being transient, uneducated, and unmotivated. The lack of most hospitality managers in giving commendations to employees who must interact with strangers on a daily basis is rarely given a second thought (Gutek, 1999). Those managers who are acclaimed by employees in terms of expended emotional labor are managers who are seen as having integrity by way of keeping promises and in the demonstration of supportive values. It is in a manager's behavioral integrity that employees will rally to the cause and bottom line profits will grow. With a lack of value for emotional labor manager integrity is severely compromised and an employee's commitment to the guest service entity will most definitely be affected.
Contained within the employee emotional labor factor and the behavioral integrity of the manager is the concept of employee commitment. With integrity and the recognition of employee emotional labor factors there will result employee commitment, in turn producing guest satisfaction, profitability, and lowered employee turnover. Once emotional labor factors and management integrity have been established there can then exist a realization and acceptance of the roles to be assumed by all participants in the industry.
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