HRM in service sector involves emotions

New service sector management tool
Satisfying customers requires the empowering of workers … research – customer satisfaction is correlated with employee satisfaction.. happy employees lead to happy customers
- this perspective is not about how service work is,- it is about how it should be

in fact most contemporary service front line work is quite harmful,

additional features of service
-perishability
product of service work does not last – cannot store service work as you store toys as factory produce problem to measure service work coz of this

simultaneous production and consumption if a waiter is serving meal, meal will be consumed at same time- if call centre answers call… like lecture give lecture student receive at same time

inseparability worker and customer, cannot take place without customer, lecture cannot take place without students, call centre needs customer calling.. must exist for service work

some service work
i.e teachers, doctors very specialised workers in management consultancy are better categorised as knowledge workers

knowledge workers different from service workers

Emotional Labour
Not required to smile with product
i.e software engineer certain behaviour when requires smile and be friendly with customers

Many workers/ frontline workers are required to display certain emtoions and behaviours

Emotional labour was firstly conceptualized by…
Study of flight attendants, workers were expected by management to display certain emotions to give customer certain feelings.. in this kind of work management imposes certain feelings

Emotions can become commodity
Benefit of employer in exchange they receive a
Commodifying emotions
Much of the work in emotional labour also studies gender of emotional labour
Emotional labour is often described as natural women work and skill
Doesn’t require any skills so justify being low pay

Some may argue doesn’t matter we use emotions anyway, so how is emotional labour different from general emotion work from our personal life

3 differences in slides from personal emotion

emotion worker required to display certain emotions to exchange for benefit from employer

key distinction of emotional labour is it takes place in a unequal relationship with customer – underpinned by this idea of sovergniety of customer and subsoveirgnity of employee

worker has no same power – whereas in private relationships it is more equal whereas in emotional work worker cant respond negatively – this is was manager says customer can talk to you how he wants you have to deal with it in private worl we don’t have to do this – more fair

key distinction between emotional labour and private exchanged feeling rules emposed by organisation – in our private lifes feelings are expressed from bonds with people and natural exchanges whereas in work must behave and say according to what management says

mark argues emotional labour is particularly harmful to workers as management doesn’t only require workers to pretend to show emotion but they really demand they want workers to interiorise the true feeling and try to feel what they are showing. So not only show friendliness, but FEEL friendly

This can be harmful because it creates confusion and alienation
Quote (hochschild) book
In slide””

She argues people in this work people try control peoples hearts – dehumanising

His work was interesting and innovative when first published- it has also been subject to some criticisms
She argues emotional labour is harmful to employees

Many workers don’t even need to surface acts, some workers don’t need to act because they actually do
Many nurses will feel empathy towards patients

Research has also shown for a lot of resistance- numerous examples call centre work which shows resistance
Even scope for negotiation between managers

Research also shows circumstances for emotional labour