Emotional labor of frontline employees : generational differences and intention to stay

Abstract

Emotional labor often takes the form of displaying fake or genuine feelings toward customers, showing interest in customer needs, and engaging in employee-customer emotional interactions. The purpose of this research was to investigate the emotional labor states adopted and practiced by frontline employees in the hospitality industry. We analyzed significant differences of emotional labor among Generation X and Y, and socio-demographic characteristics of frontline employees. The influence of emotional labor states on frontline employees’ intention to stay is also examined. The emotional labor states applied here were surface acting, deep acting, genuine acting and emotive dissoance. A quantitative approach was adopted and data were collected from three-, four-, and five-star hotels in Hong Kong. The study found that Generation X respondents adopted genuine acting and emotional dissonance more often, while Generation Y respondents used surface acting and deep acting more frequently. The findings suggest that although surface acting has a significant effect on employees’ intention to stay, genuine acting and sincere feelings toward one’s job have a stronger effect. 情绪劳动通常采取对客户表现出虚假或真实感觉, 对客户的需求表现出兴趣以及进行员工与客户之间的感情互动的形式。本研究的目的是调查酒店行业的前线员工所采用和实践的情绪劳动状态。我们分析了X和Y两代之间情绪劳动的显著差异以及前线员工的社会人口统计学特征。并且, 我们还研究了情绪劳动状态对前线员工留职意向的影响。在这研究中应用的情绪劳动状态有:表面行为, 深层行为, 真实行为和情绪失调。 本研究采用了定量调查研究方式, 并收集了香港三星级, 四星级和五星级酒店的数据。该研究发现, X代的受访者更经常采用真实行为和情绪失调, 而Y代的受访者更频繁地使用表面行为和深度行为。研究结果表明, 尽管表面行为对员工的留职意向有显著影响, 但真实行为和对工作的真诚感受会产生更大的影响。