Service with a Smile and Contemporary Attitudes of Emotion in the Workplace - Coursework Example

What does the phrase ‘service with a smile’ reveal about contemporary attitudes to emotion in the workplace? Use theory in your answer and give examples to support your view. Name Institution Course Tutor Date Emotion is a complex feelings state which is associated with overt behaviours and physiological arousal (Gopinath 2011). It is mainly expressive in nature because a person who is emotional in moved. Whenever, people attempt to attain happiness or avoid irritation, the motivation to behave so is significantly influenced by emotions. Every organization has its own rules explaining the type of emotions employees should display and the degree to which these emotions should be expressed in the workplace. In customer service environment, ‘service with a smile’ is emphasized and is treated as a key requirement of the job as it is found to increase customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty (Barger and Grandey 2005). Therefore, some emotions, more so when applied at inappropriate time is, likely to lead to low employee performance. However, this does not rule out the fact that employees display own emotions in the workplace and when studying Organizational behaviour the role of role of employee emotions at work can not be ignored (Hume 2005). This paper uses Affective Events Theory (AET) to explore how ‘service with a smile’ tells us about contemporary attitudes of emotion in the workplace. According to Hume (2005) affective events theory suggests that events in the workplace make employees display certain emotional reactions, which eventually influences attitudes and behaviours displayed by such employees in the workplace. (See the illustration in Figure 1). Ideally, emotions are as essential part of peoples’ lives, particularly in their work lives. AET increases the understanding of the connection between emotions job performance and satisfaction. It begins by recognizing that emotions expressed by employees occur due to various responses they encounter in the work environment. The work environment involves things, such as job demands, variety of tasks, need to express emotional labor and degree of autonomy. Through such environment, work events are created and they can be uplifts, hassles, or both. Uplifting events are characterized by receiving recognition, getting support from other employees and meeting goals (Basch and Fisher 2000). However, hassles are people who do not accept conflicting directions from various managers and are not willing to carry their share of work. Normally, various work events prompt either positive or negative emotional reactions among employees, such as smiling when attending to customers. However, their personalities and moods may hinder the intensity of their respond to work events (Fineman 2000). For example, employees who have low emotional stability may tend to react strongly to work events that are negative. Equally, their mood explains the fact that their affect cycle would always fluctuate. This means that emotional response by employees towards any given event in the workplace is prone to change depending on the mood (Hume 2005). Therefore, emotional reactions, such as smiling influence affect-driven behaviour and work attitudes, such as loyalty, commitment and job satisfaction. Work attitudes are considered to have long-term effects in the contemporary workplace. For example employees may decide to quit their job or participate systematically in pro-social behaviours (Fineman 2000). They may also participate in productive work depending on how they are treated by their colleagues and managers. Emotions experienced by employees are influenced by personal dispositions, such as trait affect or emotional intelligence (Ashkanasy and Daus 2002). Figure 1: Affective Events Theory (AET) Source: Ashkanasy and Daus (2002) Based on the AET, it is clear that emotional states highly influence formation of attitude and behaviour of employees in organizations. In addition, day-to-day activities employees do in the workplace influence the way they think and relate with their job, colleagues and employers (Hume 2005). This implies that the emotions we build up while at work can potentially affect our behaviours. The message AET delivers to managers is very clear; they cannot afford to ignore emotions and events that occur in organizations, irrespective of how relatively minor they may appear (Ashkanasy and Daus 2002). According to Ashkanasy and Daus (2002) hassles that have the potential to produce negative emotions in organizations include interactions with colleagues, subordinates, supervisors and customers. These may take place either within or outside the business environment. Many people experience hassles in the workplace, such as being annoyed by the supervisors during day-to-day activities, which often changes their emotions and behaviours toward others (Rupp and Spencer 2006). Equally, uplifts can originate from the same sources identified above. Employees at work appear to be in a position to deal with infrequent occurrences, irrespective of whether these occurrences are fairly intense, especially if employees experience uplifting events, such as support by colleagues and management (Grzywacz and Marks 2000). However, the situation may worsen due to systematic occurrence of negative events. Generally, accumulation of both positive and negative events will determine how employees feel in the workplace. Anyone who has ever worked in retail sales or in a restaurant understands the significance of projecting a friendly smile and behaviour. Although, there are days when such as person may not have been in a cheerful mood, he or she knew very well what management expected of him or her as far as relating with customers concern (Kenny and Bell 2011). Thus, it is likely that the person faked a smile expressing emotional behaviour. The point we are tying to make is that many occupations, especially those which involve service work, have strong norms and expectations that requires employees to display emotion, particularly smiling (Van Maanen 1991). Given the trend, organizations, embody explicit norms in job descriptions or recruitment approaches. For example, most service industries hire people with smiling faces so to maintain good relationship with customers in the workplace. In addition, implicit norms exist in organizations and influence how employees relate to the existing culture, distribution of raises and rewards, and valuation of jobs (Ashkanasy and Daus 2002). For example, a retail organization may reward employees who behave nicely to customers or shoppers to encourage employees to practice the norm. Employees in organizations spend mental and physical labour when they exercise both their cognitive capabilities and bodies, respectively, into their day-to-day activities. However, jobs and occupations require application of emotional labour (Frost 2003). According to See, Morris and Feldman (2000) emotional labour is where employees express the desired emotions by the organization when performing transactions that are interpersonal in nature. The concept of emotional labour was established by Hochschild (1983) and he explained it as the act that involves managing emotion in the workplace. According to Hochschild (1983) managing people’s emotions in the service organization is really an emotionally draining process. This relates to the fact that employees in service industries are required or expected by management to express an emotion that they actually do not fee or sometimes difficult to feel, instead of expressing one that they feel (Ashkanasy and Daus 2002). For example, an employee at a retail store may simply smile and wish customers well, even when he or she is feeling dreadful. In addition, an employee may demonstrate emotion suppression, especially when he or she experiences frustration, anger and resentment, an event that may lead to counterproductive behaviour, such as jamming the cash register to inconvenient colleagues. Emotional labour is applicable to almost all jobs. For example, Airlines require their employees, especially flight attendants to be cheerful the same way we would expect doctors to be neutral in their emotions while funeral directors to show sadness. Generally, managers would expect their subordinates, for example to interact well with colleagues, to be courteous and to avoid hostile behaviours in the workplace. The challenge exists where employees are supposed to project particular emotion at the same time feel another (Ekman, Friesen and O’Sullivan 1997). This, according to (Hume 2005) causes a situation of emotional dissonance which can really affect employees. Emotional dissonance, if not treated, can result to emotional exhaustion and even burnout. There exists a close relationship between emotional labour and the performance of customer service. According to Hume (2005) the need to express emotions in a way that is not in line with the true feelings to an individual is a common practice in the contemporary customer service environment. One of the reasons why this is common is due to the fact that perceptions of customers towards the service offered and employee attitude to fundamental to organizational success (Rupp and Spencer 2006). Employees can create favourable impressions in minds of customers by expressing positive attitudes. Similarly, they can create unfavourable impressions to their customers by displaying negative attitudes (Pugh 2001). For example, when customers see employees as being rude to them, or behave in inappropriate and annoying manner, it portrays a bad picture to the organizations and the organization may lose in different perspectives. A part from losing a direct sale, the organization may also lose future revenue from the offended customer and those convinced by customers offended by the organization through its employees. Nevertheless, when employees express positive and genuine emotions to customers, it helps boost the image of the organization (Fineman 2006). For example, in a service environment, reactions from customers and the outcome of the organization is highly depends on the expression of feelings by employees. The effects of employee emotions and feelings to customers may be unexpected by the organization, such as realizing that the smiles of sales personnel leads to an atmosphere that relaxed in low-sales stores as compared to high-sales stores. The explanation to such an outcome is that, in high-volume stores it appears that employees have no time to smile or even become sociable because the stores are normally busy (Rust and Oliver 2000). According to recent research, emotional expression of sales people, which is reflected in customer delight, has a great influence on customer recovery after failure. Ideally, it is clear that employees must effectively manage emotional labour if organizations have to achieve customer recovery, retention, and delight (Hume 2005). Normally, the effects of emotional labour vary from employee to employee. Some employees may be skilled or prepared to effectively manage emotional labour and without any personal repercussions (Schaubroeck and Jones 2000). Also, outcomes are likely to vary considering the type of emotional labour displayed by employees. For example, a sales clerk may chose to express emotions he or she does not feel by trying to display mood that matches the emotional expression required by the organization. When employees do this successfully, it can lead to a positive effect (Solomon, 2002). When talking about emotion in the workplace we cannot forget to talk about the issue of emotional intelligence. This concept has significant implications for hiring employees in the organization and managing their performance in the workplace (Hume 2005). In addition, based on the phrase ‘service with a smile’ business practitioners, especially in customer service are focusing on optimizing the performance of employees by identifying, selecting and training them in essential competencies including emotional abilities (Ashkanasy and Daus 2002). Consider an office manager who is not aware of both her emotions and of others. She is always moody and cannot generate much interest in her subordinates, a part from not being in a position to understand why employees often get angry with her. Worse still, the officer usually overreacts to problems and responds to emotional situations in a more ineffectual way (Caruso, Mayer and Salovey 2002). The officer can be said to have low emotional intelligence because she is not able to detect and manage emotional situations around her. Thus, according to Hume (2005) employees working in customer service business should demonstrate emotional intelligence based on five dimensions of self-awareness, self-management, self-motivation, empathy and social skills so to make ‘service with a smile’ practable. Conclusively, ‘service with a smile’ is a phrase highly recognized by many customer service organizations. Managers in the contemporary workplace expect their employees to express certain emotions, such as smiling while attending to customers. As shown in the AET, positive emotions shown to customers by employees help organizations achieve job satisfaction, loyalty and commitment which are essential to their success. Therefore, the way in which employees manage emotional labor influences the performance of customer service in any organization. This implies that managers should advice employees their employees on issues of emotional labour honestly, openly and consistently. 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