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The Emotional Labour of the Restauration Workers and the different Consequences of it, resulting from the Status of the Employee.

The Emotional Labour of the Restauration Workers and the different Consequences of it, resulting from the Status of the Employee.
Author: Patricia Jimenez Garcia
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Abstract: Through an in-depth research of the emotional labour work of the restauration entrepreneurs and workers, its roots and consequences will be analyzed in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the sector that employs the greatest number of people in the tourism industry.

Key words: emotional labour, entrepreneurs, employees, restauration, burnout.

There is a strand of thought about service work that sees it as significantly different from other types of work because of the emotional work it involves, in addition to the physical and mental work it also demands. In my paper, I intend to investigate and compare the emotional labour of one particular group: restauration owners and the employees.

The concept of emotional labour has been the focus of many scholars, especially in the hospitality and tourism industry, in the past decades (Warhurst and Nickson, 2007: 107). As a tertiary sector industry, restauration is fundamentally based in the service of its employees, which implies a big amount of emotional labour.

Namely, emotional labour/work is defined by Van Dijk et al. as an emotional display managed by employees in order to satisfy anticipations of an organization during face-to-face or voice-to-voice interpersonal interplay (Van Dijk, Smith and Cooper, 2011). The effort that emotional labour requires can generate emotional discomfort, which may cause work dissatisfaction and burnout. It is undeniable that an employee who is experiencing exhaustion at work may show signs of helplessness, irritability, etc. In addition, work problems may be extrapolated to the private life generating family problems or alcohol abuse, among others (Maslach and Jackson, 1981).

Although entrepreneurs represent a large group of working people who create a big number of direct and indirect jobs, it is not widely researched yet (Karabanow, 1999). Small business owners deal with long hours, with founders having to make up for a lack of staff and expertise by overseeing most (if not all) elements of their operation. Emma Mamo (2018) states that this extra effort results in burnout, being common the difficulty of emotions' management among business professionals (Mamo, 2018).

I find very valuable to examine the possible differences between the stress faced by an entrepreneur, whose business is his or her own, and the stress faced by an employee, marked by the volume of work. To this end, I will analyse the main challenges faced by an owner, through a personal perspective. To do so, one interview was conducted for this research, which involved a 52-year-old male who occupies three positions: owner, manager and worker. Lasting 30 minutes, the interview revealed three main findings: the big amount of demands associated with the performance of emotional labour (which can have negative consequences, such as burnout); the interpersonal skills needed to work in a pub and the additional difficulty that he, as an owner and manager, faces as a result of his position.

The interview revealed that an employee is working by the clock and time is also related to the profit of the pub, because the faster is the turnover, the more incomes can be generated, as well as better tips (Rose, 2001). This pressure is increased in the owner’s case as apart from managing it, his income depends entirely on his performance. That is the reason why it becomes more difficult to the owner to distance himself from work, as the establishment’s profitability affects him directly (Koivunen, 1998).

My interviewee’s experience is not unique among small business owners. According to a recent survey of 1,000 SME, one in three has personally suffered from anxiety or depression in the past five years (Caines, 2019). Anxiety in entrepreneurs comes from the stress of the daily work, the desire to fulfil your clients expectations while generating income and having your employees satisfied. On the other hand, my interviewee stated that employees have to follow the rules of a workplace in order to keep their job. However, that does not imply that they have to deal with negative emotions to the limit.

These findings suggest that both employees and owners should receive specific emotional training on how to deal with and manage these emotions effectively, although the source of this pressure is different on both sides. On the one hand, the employer has to work with two groups of people at the same time: employees and customers, although the contact with the customer is more superficial than in the case of the employee, the employer faces the additional stress of generating income. On the other hand, the employee is the face of the establishment as is the one on the front line and has to work hard to meet the expectations of the owner, even though he does not have the direct pressure the owner has because the business is not his.

Both positions imply different qualifications, but what is certain is that a good management of emotions would avoid the extrapolation of work problems to private life, which would avoid negative consequences such as exhaustion, this way the well-being and job satisfaction of both the owner and the employees, would be increased.



References

Caines, M. (2019). The stress and loneliness of being a small business owner. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/connect/small-business/stress-loneliness-small-business-owner-mental-health/ [Accessed 9 May 2019].

Hochschild, A. R. (2012) The managed heart. Commercialization of human feeling. (Twentieth anniversary edition) London: University of California Press.

Warhurst, C. and Nickson, D. (2007). Employee experience of aesthetic labour in retail and hospitality. Work, Employment and Society, 21(1), pp.103-120.