Employees as a Multi-Skilled Emotion Managers - Essay Example

? Bolton’s (2004: 20) Claims that Emotion Work can Be Viewed as a Distinctive Form of Skilled Work and Employees as a Multi-Skilled Emotion Managers.Name: Institution: The corporate world in the 21st century contains a number of people employed in the field that applies emotion labour as a skill. Among the fields, that one can find such skills include the hotels, hospitals and airline companies. The employees in these areas manage their emotions, as well as those of their customers; the management of their emotions forms an integral part of their duty. Emotion labour as defined by Payne is the work that involves trying to feel the appropriate feeling for a given job (2006, p.2). The emotion labour is common in the service industries. Payne states that, the workers have the obligation to carry out emotion work in the form of politeness, enthusiasm or remaining calm even when under intense pressure. This forms an integral part to achieve customer satisfaction. Payne agrees with Bolton’s argument that emotion work is a distinct highly skilled labour. Bolton’s argument is because emotion work shares some emotion features that prove its ability to be categorised as skilled labour.. Emotion labour requires that employees practice some level of discretion complexity and worker control (2004, p. 20). The complexity in emotional work comes from the explanation by Goff man that the everyday social interaction by employees in emotion work requires a person with the capability of switching through numerous feelings. Bolton states that, employees in the service field should have emotional managerial skills that will allow them to carry out their duties effectively. The workers should be able to distinguish the various emotional displays desired for a given task in their work. Bolton gives an example that the employees could utilise humour as a way of building rapport with the customer or as a means of defusing customer aggression. Emotion workers have to be able to control their interactions with customers to avoid unnecessary exchanges with their customers. In this case, the customer gets the right to display discontent and anger that are not available to the worker (2005c, p.26). Bolton further describes the emotion worker as an active and controlling force in the labour process. The emotion worker subverts the organisational feeling rules imposed to them by management. An example is the Disneyland operator who offers to be of assistance to customers by separating them into different rides despite the resistance by customers. Bolton tries also to explain how a customer does benefit from the employees act of resistance (2004b, p. 29). An employer, despite his tight schedule, may take his time to help a customer who happens to be in dire need of help. The employee in this case violates the company’s regulation to help the customer. Emotion work, according to Bolton’s observation is indeed a skilled work in that it is through the employees’ interaction with the customer that the image of the company is portrayed and, therefore, serves as a marketing strategy. Emotion labour is a skilled labour, yet the many of emotion labour are low paying jobs with a low status. Bolton observes that the jobs need to be considered as skilled labour, and employees be provided with their rightful payment as skilled workers. The difficulty in categorising emotion labour arises because the traditional systems of certification find it hard to quantify emotional skills. Then again, the emotional skills are part of the worker this makes the skills to be easily dismissed as personal traits. Then it is argued that most of the workers involved in emotion labour are women. Philips and Taylor say that emotion work involves elements of people work and caring for others this trait is seen as an innate feminine quality (1986, p.55). They argue that women have a natural gift when it comes to handling emotional skills. Korczynski observes the scepticism that surrounds the description of emotion labour skills as real skills. Many believe that not all-emotional work fit the description of skilled labour. An example provided is the work performed by women in betting shops. Filby warns of the dangers of romanticising such work yet they still want to describe it as skilled labour (1992, p.39). Filby argues that emotional labour whether in private or public is untutored and, therefore, in his view is a poor service. Payne describes emotion work as complex in that the skills possessed by the emotion worker though mistaken for personal traits observers tend to scrutinize the level of skills involved. Bolton argues that service interaction is a fragile accomplishment that requires high levels of skilled emotion work. Business researchers have proved that non-certified social skills do not attract a wage premium. They argue that normally a short in the supply of such skills would eventually raise the bidding price of labour, however, applying this rule to the emotion labour quickly degenerates into a mere rhetorical device bears no material benefits (Grugulis, 2004.p.12). Elf bein, polzer and Ambady consider emotion to have a central role in an organization. They explain that everyday function in an organization involves feelings that serve the purpose of shaping and lubricating the social interaction in the organization. Psychologists explain that emotion is the key tool that facilitates communication. Emotional cues are useful delivering the messages that are difficult or uncomfortable to express. The benefits of emotion in the work place are its ability to coordinate relationships and interactions. Mills argues that emotional labour involves selling of personality in order to obtain a wage. He considers emotion labour at a market exchange perspective; however, Hoschild looks at emotion labour in the dimension of a social reproduction, which serves to sustain the relationships of cooperation, and civility. Hoschild states the strategic management of emotions for social effect is not recognized as labour. She states that emotion labour has been feminized and naturalized as a spontaneous eruption. The skills involved in emotion labour remain difficult to grasp (1983, p.167). Hoschild states that, emotion labour involves the use and production of subjectivity. He offers the example of selling of emotional display Hoschild argues that, in the case of selling emotional display, the worker should display a love for the job as part of the job. The worker becomes successful in this task by trying to love and enjoy the customers helps the worker achieve the target of the task.The emotion labour involves the coordination of mind and feeling it draws on a source of self that is deep and integral to individuality. Emotion labour involves both deep acting and surface acting. Blauvelt looks at women in the 18th century, how their work of emotion was influential in the formation of class identity, individual and gender. The women used experiences and expression of emotion to negotiate between self and society (2007, p.10). The efforts by women to the proper emotional feeling and expression reflected on the class and gender conventions of acceptable as well as respectable behaviour. The women were encouraged to embrace sensibility in order to encourage their acts of self expression. They were, however, advised against feeling too much. The society expected the women to perform a tight balancing act between controlled tranquillity and intense feeling. Blauvelt argues that the regulation and proper expression was work for women. According to Blauvelt, this work was either dismissed or unnoticed in the 18th century. Blauvelt explains that, the women emotional work has not been accorded the true significance of value. The private and public sector both derived some benefits from the emotional work of women. The women, in the 18th century, were expected to suppress their anger and retain equanimity. Women who confronted their emotions developed a beautiful sense of self. The women used their diaries to confine their anger (2007, p. 140). The emotional work performed by women was directed towards the pleasing of others. The women tend to be less expressive in their diaries than when they are doing so in public. Blauvelt explains that the work of the heart that women constantly performed underscored the complex, emotional landscape that is responsible for the construction of social gender personal and class identity. The emotional labour is essential to understanding the everyday organisational life. Emotional labour also offers an insight into the importance of employees emotion management skills many describe the emotional labour as demanding tedious stressful and frustrating. The emotional labour has been taken as an unskilled and poorly rewarded task. The culture of the customer in the emotion labour bears a superiority status over the consumer, the interaction between the customer and the service provider is an unequal exchange. The service provider has to endure rude and abusive customers. The capital attempts to control emotion are successful, although, the treatment of emotions as commodities is evident. It is true to describe the emotional worker as a social actor and a multi-skilled emotion manager. This is because different people (Bolton, 2004b, p.1) perceive these workers differently. Emotion labour involves the suppression of certain emotions so as to conform to a given social norm. Researchers have made the conclusion that a successful service depends on emotional labour. Hoschild examines emotional labour as the managed heart the control of peoples personal and work life has been a skilled mastered over the years. Emotion labour is integral to human behaviour. Hoschild describes emotional labour to as involving surface acting and deep acting. The surface acting involves expressing an emotion without feeling that emotion; it involves the masking of negative emotions such as annoyance, anger, sadness with happier emotions such as excitement, happiness and care. (1983b, p. 123). The deep acting involves two different emotional actions the first involves exhibiting the actual emotion that one feels, and the other is a true method acting using the past emotional experience to encourage real emotion. The emotional labour involves the control of these emotions to conform to social norms. Many organisations have a set of policies that describe a service provider’s conduct with the customers. The service providers use these policies to judge the correct response. For example, the McDonalds encourage sincerity, enthusiasm, sense of humour and confidence in their personnel. Feelings connect to the culture of civilisation, in Australian work place workers show courtesy to their customers regardless of the behaviour they receive in response. Emotional labour is of importance especially when a service transaction is going wrong. When the customer is dissatisfied with the quality of service provided, in such situations, the employee maintains a calm and polite atmosphere although the customer is irritating and upsetting the employee. The labour skill depicted by the employee in the above situation includes self-control, suppressing of negative emotion and evoking emotion that is more positive. The feeling rules provided the organisations are responsible for the employees’ awareness that they need to act in a polite manner. The customers, in any case, have an expectation of quality service whereas the set of feeling rules by which they operate. Among the rules that the employee operate include, trustworthiness, understanding approachability and courtesy (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993, p. 100). Each of the feeling changes judging by the mood of the customer. The emotion labour does have negative effects on the employees in the sense that surface acting can cause sufferer to experience detachment from own emotions. An emotional burnout can lead to dissatisfaction with the service delivered and doubt about the effectiveness. Chances in this case are the employee will abandon their job. Hoschilds give an example of the flight attendant he describes that a flight attendant can affect the comfort of a person in the flight. The flight attendant is the person that the customer sees most of the time; therefore, it is of importance for the flight attendant to master emotion management skills to represent the flight company positively. Emotional labour according to Persaud can be a source of job satisfaction depending on whether the employee is experiencing surface acting or deep acting (2004,p.40). If the employee is surface acting, then the strain of masking the emotion can cause stress. This acting is not recommended for care professionals like flight attendants, doctors and nurses. The main reason is that care is driven by emotional labour. The loss of care due to emotional stress causes a loss in the element of the job and, therefore, the customer expectation will not be met. Letting a wrong emotion leak out or having the wrong emotional labour can cause an employer to lose their job. Continuous surface acting leads to an emotional stress build up, emotional stress hinders the performance of emotional control decreasing the ability for one to perform the job. On the other hand, deep acting can be of benefit to the people. Therefore, deep acting should be encouraged in the workplace. Many employees in emotion labour have developed insincerity simply in an effort to satisfy what is expected of them in their job. However, this trait could ruin a conversation once the customers detect it. Feeling rules change depending on the profession superb example is the shop assistant who can utilise less feeling rules than a fire fighter or a counsellor. An effective feeling rule in the retail business is crucial. On the other hand, the counsellor or fire fighter may require guidance with the feeling rules to avoid emotion stress. The way to deal with an emotion stress in case of any would be through de-briefing. De-briefing in this case involves informing another person of an emotionally stressful event. Usually a trained professional exists in the business for employees to talk to when they are experiencing negative events. The employees receiving advice from the supervisor or trained professional employees are trained about the signs of surface acting and how best to combat surface acting. Emotional labour will always be beneficial to the service industry. Loukidou, loannidi, and anagnostopoulou examine nursing as one of the occupations that utilize high in emotional labour. They say that nursing is an emotional labour because of the fact that it represents the social representation of nurses and two it involves constant management and suppression of feelings(2008,p. 2). The social representation of nurses presents nurses as caring, sympathetic loving and involved with patients (Leidner, 1991, p.20). These traits determine the essence of nursing as showing commitment, sympathising with patients and supporting patients emotionally. This describes the role that nurses have to perform (Shannon, 1991, p.24). The stereotyping of nurses has led to the characterisation of nurses as emotional jugglers. The nurses play roles that require the suppression of feeling, for example, nurses are responsible for the hygiene of patients this demand for the suppression of feelings of disgust constituting this an emotional act (Meerabeau, 2004, p.330). Nurses suppress the feelings of disgust in order to express the feeling of caring. Nurses also have the role of providing emotional support for patients, when dealing with terminal diseases and intolerable pain; it requires the effective management of personal emotions in order for the nurses to effectively attend to the patients. Nursing have to manage their emotions when they experience incongruence between their professional, ethical standards and the organizational standards. Most of the time, this obstructs nursing work. When considering the effects of emotional labour on nurses it was observed that it was the main cause of stress due to the effort to display a caring face (McVicar, 2003, p.125). The constant suppression of emotion has an effect on the employees’ somatic health. The constant suppression of emotions was found have an impact on the immune system. The implications on health range include fatigue, sleepless nights, and hypertension. The constant change of emotions between real and displayed emotions does influence negatively other aspects of employees well being such as alienation, self-esteem, depression cynicism, and moral depression. Lastly, emotional labour has been found to affect employees’ performance. The outcomes of performing emotional tasks include low involvement, low performance, high withdrawal intentions and dissatisfaction (Cigantesco et al., 2006, p.30). In-order to avoid the unpleasant side of the nursing work the organisation need to act before the problem occurs. Another solution will be teaching nursing students about the practical and emotional aspect of their future work. The role of nursing education is crucial in the development of the workforce that is aware of the informal emotional skills that will be necessary to practice, but will also know how to use them effectively for his or her personal benefit, as well as the benefits of patients. Nursing schools are encouraged to promote critical thinking, and encourage their students to evaluate behaviours, and personal attitudes to be able to allow, and help them explore their students’ interests’ abilities and difficulties. The nursing students focus on teaching ethical codes of clinical practice, decision-making and healthcare (Loannidi, 2008, p.35). They should promote clinical practice in order to help them understand their future professional role. The students should be introduced to the skills of problem solving in relation to their encounter through practice. The students should be taught project management techniques based on the real work situations. It is necessary to make emotional labour valued visible and use it to counter the potential for ignoring and exploiting patients’ emotional needs. To be able to limit the effects, of emotional labour and promote the health of the nursing working force there is a need to apply a preventive strategy, which is vital, and cost-effective measures. The educational institutes play a significant role of equipping the nurses with the practical knowledge, and the necessary skills that will help the students manage the emotional aspect of nursing work. This helps in the promotion of the health of the nursing work force. Let us conclude this discussion by pointing out that emotion labour is the practice of n individual controlling their behaviour to display the appropriate emotions. The feeling rule s governs what is the appropriate emotion. We have also seen surface acting can be unhealthy for an individual, which can result to health issues and quitting. There is also the aspect of deep acting, which can be beneficial to an individual, and an enriching experience. The customers have an expectation of quality service and the service providers have the duty of meeting the employers’ expectation. Emotion has also been categorised as a socially negotiated phenomenon that could be harnesses to an employer’s pursuit of a commercial profit. Bolton looks at the emotion labour offered by doctors’ nurses and social workers as one that is controlled by professional norms and client expectations. Bolton views emotion labour as some form of skilled labour and he defines the employees as multi-skilled mangers. They are the controlling force in the labour market. Therefore, emotion work is one that requires skill and management of those skills to avoid emotional stress. Bibliography Blauvelt, M. T. 2007. The Work Of The Heart: Young Women and Emotion. United States of America: University Of Virginia Press. Bolton, S. 2001a. Changing Faces: Nurses as Emotional Jugglers. Sociology Health and Fitness, 85-100. Bolton, S. 2004b. 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