The front desk at a five-star hotel is busy. One group is checking in. Others are checking out. All are greeted by a row of smiles from behind the front desk.
A middle-aged couple is scrutinising a checkout account and querying several items.
“What is the activity listed at 20,000 rupiah the woman asks. “Bike hire,” says the front desk assistant, with a smile.
“And the wine,” the woman continues. “So expensive.” The front desk associate says nothing, just smiles.
The smile never slips during the five-minute interaction between guest and employee.
That’s Bali, visitors say. “All smiles.”
Yet, according to a new report from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, those smiles could be suppressing or hiding work stress among frontline hotel workers.
Not just in Bali but everywhere.
The costs of faking a smile
After gathering data from frontline employees at seven hotels in Hong Kong, researchers Dr Deniz Kucukusta and Yoo Jin Lim found frontline workers adopt emotional labour strategies to counter the dissonance experienced when their expressed and felt emotions do not match.
As the report’s authors explain, “Emotional labour takes the form of displaying fake or genuine feelings toward customers. These emotional ‘products’ are designed to enhance customers’ emotions and moods during service encounters.
“Yet for employees, excessive emotional labour can lead to burnout, poor job performance, low job satisfaction, and a strong intention to leave one’s job.”
The report’s authors focused on Generation X and Generation Y, the generations dominating the global workforce, and made specific predictions regarding preferred emotional labour styles based on the documented characteristics of each generation.
“By understanding how employees of different generations with different values react to and cope with emotive dissonance,” say the researchers, “managers will be able to offer the right mitigation solutions to the right employees.”
Whilst Generation X and Generation Y have been found to share work values and to similarly relish personal growth opportunities, Generation Y members have been characterised as having comparatively high self-esteem and low work engagement.
For this reason, the authors suggested that “Generation Y members have a higher tendency to practice surface acting and deep acting,” and that “Generation X employees are experienced workers, so are more likely to practice deep acting and genuine acting.”
If so, the researchers expected emotional dissonance and its effects to be stronger among members of Generation Y than Generation X.
To minimise the effects of emotional labour, the researchers recommend providing employees with tailored emotional intelligence training, according to generational differences, in the use of emotional labour states.
“This might increase involvement at work, reduce emotional burnout and enhance job satisfaction,” the report finds.