Emotional Work Issues - Essay Example

Full Name Name of Instructor Subject: Date of Submission Emotional Work Emotional work refers to feelings that are expressed in the form of reactions and responses in engaging clients, customers, co workers, subordinates and management in a work place and in expediting business duties. These are attached feelings in ones personality that causes someone to relate and connect to other people and situations in a certain manner. In every work place, employers expect their employees to show and display specific qualities and attributes together with relevant expertise specific to their placement in order to be productive in their jobs and enable the management to achieve their objectives and goals. Emotional work is a typical reflection of sales and service sector jobs where it is applied(Strazdins 7). Emotional work entails working on the psychological aspects of the client before selling the product or service. Research in sales and marketing reveals that it is easier to close a sale after working on the emotions of the customer than struggling to convince a negative customer. The use of emotional appeal is a basic principle in sales and marketing. This shows how the people involved in sales do emotional work (Strazdins 7). Emotional work can create a need where none existed. In the course of an encounter with a prospect, the sales person would always try to create a need in the customer by using emotions. For instance sales people in health care can show a customer how there is a high risk of infection with a chronic disease if the customer is not on dietary supplements. This might make the prospect realize that he or she is in trouble and would therefore fall for the recommended product. A sales job and a service sector job require the salesperson to be emotionally connected with the customer to impact on the feelings and close a sale. Successful sales personalities aim at building relationships with customers and not just physically selling products or services. In building relationships, emotions come into work. Through asking simple questions, successful sales people get to know their customers. They understand their needs and wants through active listening (Strazdins 7). Successful sales persons are connected to their prospects emotionally. This is achieved through physical gestures, eye contact and body movements. A simple handshake can work on the emotions of the customers. Emotional work also covers the knowledge orientation of an individual as well as others to abide by the accepted dimensions of emotional expression. It is for this reason that emotion work is performed courtesy of friends and family members. They are important in putting pressure on sales people to adhere to job requirements. Emotional work is effective and productive when the right degrees of positive emotions are attached to them. Service sectors jobs and sales and marketing jobs are affected by emotions. This is because emotional jobs are designed to create an emotional state of mind to sell and deliver their services to intended target. Studies investigating the effect of emotions on service business productivity reveal that a corresponding effect is generated on clients and customers respond with positive or negative emotions accordingly. Therefore, the level of success of service sector job/business is directly related to the positive levels of emotions generated by the employees of clients (Raz 6). Early trade related experiences develop a foundation of the sale person’s personalities. Further, they carve out basic senses of human emotions from the world. Feelings of competence, security, as well as hope are generated from potential gentleness, care and ability to convince a client (which needs to be emotionally attuned and reliable). While most sales people appear to be loving they are human beings and as imperfect as all other people. They are left with disintegrated painful experiences emerging in the course of their activities such as in relationships, trouble spots, self-direction and decision-making. This could also be in the form of recurrent painful and unstable emotional states such as apathy, anxiety or depression. Only these individuals know the extent to which the trouble spots affect their personal satisfaction in life (Raz 6). The main determinants of applying emotional work in sales promotion include organizational, occupational, and societal norms. For instance, empirical evidence shows that typically busy sales stores have more legitimacy in expressing negative emotions as compared to places within typically slow stores. Here, the employees are required to conduct themselves according to the outlined rules. For this reason, the emotional culture that one belongs to directly influences the commitment of the employee to the set rules. Inner feeling and Dispositional traits concerning the job such as an employee's emotional expressiveness could refer to the ability to apply facial gestures, voice, body movements to express emotions. This factor also includes the level of career identity of the employee in terms of the importance of career roles against one's self-identity. This allows the sales person to express the organizationally desired emotions, as there are fewer discrepancies between the emotional experience and expressed behaviour at the work place Various difficulties are encountered in emotional work. One of the challenges encountered is unfriendliness and resentment from possible clients / customers who dislike service offered and probably not interested in knowing what you are selling. Another challenge is past disappointments and frustration in work performance. Service work can be some times challenging in the sense that efforts may be met with rejections and bouncing back to normal or above average enthusiasm to continue may take a while(Strazdins 8). Consequently, according to Poskey, negative reports in the market due to past negative attitude of the staff may lead to difficulties in penetrating the market a second time after immediate failure. For example, poor customer service in a restaurant can take a long time before customers perceive change in service provision in terms of customer care even though changes might have been initiated. Some customers have a negative mindset and negative attitude towards sales and service jobs. This can prove a challenge especially when marketing the products. For instance, some people believe that sales people are hawkers and will not have a second look at anything sold by salesmen/women. (Poskey) In order to overcome the above challenges, some measures must be employed such as management and employee training. Management should be equipped on how to handle employees effectively with positive emotions to motivate them and inturn offer quality service with correct attitude to the customers. These will enable achievement of an organisations objectives and goals. On the other hand, employees in the service sector and sales jobs should be thoroughly trained on how to handle themselves in a positive way to sell services and products intended. Training g should be conducted on regular basis. The training should include topics on how to handle difficult clients, rejection and opposition; failure at a personal and business level, personal development programs should also be incorporated. Proper training on how to engage customers and interested parties should be done(Strazdins 10). It is important to equip service and sales providers on mechanisms and ways to overcome challenges because their degree of tolerance will determine how well they perform in the business. The better they management emotions in delivering services and execution of their jobs, the better they gain or make profit in the businesses (Strazdins 8). Emotions are crucial in maintaining the existing customers. Sales personnel have to maintain their connectivity with the customers for the sake of future business. Being concerned about the welfare and wellbeing of customers has been known to strengthen the ties between the two parties. The sales person can keep track of events such as anniversaries, birthdays and other important days to the customers. With the use of mobile phones, the sales person can easily send them good messages that can help to maintain their good relationship. This helps to illustrate the after sales emotional work done by sales personnel (Strazdins 7). Finally, the main element of emotional work is emotions themselves. They serve as the key factors on which work performance is measured and evaluated. There are elements used to channel and sell work across to the consumers. Without them service and sales jobs cannot succeed. According to Frankl, these channels of communication include facial expressions, tone variations, body language and physical presentation coordination. In conclusion, the service sector and sales jobs success and profitability are directly related to the degree they create positive emotions in the customers mind. If the emotions created are positive then the service provider business will perform well, meet their objectives and goals, and vice versa. This is because the service sector and sales jobs can be categorized as emotional work since their success depends on how well they tap in to the positive emotions of potential customers. Therefore, it is necessary to equip both management and staff with skills and expertise on how to effectively display beneficial emotions in expediting work duties. Training should include topics on personal development, handling difficult clients in the most appropriate manner, and how to deal with rejection and opposition in the course of working. The elements used in communicating the beneficial emotions are facial expressions, tone variation, body language and physical presentation and coordination. Works Cited. Frankl, Viktor, “Managing Your Emotions at Work”. 2010.Web. 30 April.2012 < http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_41.htm>. Poskey, Mike, “The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: Why It Matters More than Personality”. 1999. Web.30 April. 2012 . Raz A., Emotions at Work: Normative Control, Organizations, and Culture in Japan and America. Asia: Harvard Univ Asia Center. 2002. Pp 6-74. Print Strazdins: L., Emotional Work: A Psychological View. Sydney: Australian National University. 2000. Pp 7-30. Print Read More