Botlton Claims that Emotion Work can be Viewed as a Distinctive Form Essay

Botlton Claims that Emotion Work can be Viewed as a Distinctive Form of Skilled Work and Employees as a Multi Skilled Emotion Ma - Essay Example Emotion labour as defined by Payne is the work that involves trying to feel the appropriate feeling for a given job (2006, p.2). The emotion labour is common in the service industries. Payne states that, the workers have the obligation to carry out emotion work in the form of politeness, enthusiasm or remaining calm even when under intense pressure. This forms an integral part to achieve customer satisfaction. Payne agrees with Bolton’s argument that emotion work is a distinct highly skilled labour. Bolton’s argument is because emotion work shares some emotion features that prove its ability to be categorised as skilled labour.. Emotion labour requires that employees practice some level of discretion complexity and worker control (2004, p. 20). The complexity in emotional work comes from the explanation by Goff man that the everyday social interaction by employees in emotion work requires a person with the capability of switching through numerous feelings. Bolton states that, employees in the service field should have emotional managerial skills that will allow them to carry out their duties effectively. The workers should be able to distinguish the various emotional displays desired for a given task in their work. Bolton gives an example that the employees could utilise humour as a way of building rapport with the customer or as a means of defusing customer aggression. Emotion workers have to be able to control their interactions with customers to avoid unnecessary exchanges with their customers. In this case, the customer gets the right to display discontent and anger that are not available to the worker (2005c, p.26). Bolton further describes the emotion worker as an active and controlling force in the labour process. The emotion worker subverts the organisational feeling rules imposed to them by management. An example is the Disneyland operator who offers to be of assistance to customers by separating them into different rides despite the resi stance by customers. Bolton tries also to explain how a customer does benefit from the employees act of resistance (2004b, p. 29). An employer, despite his tight schedule, may take his time to help a customer who happens to be in dire need of help. The employee in this case violates the company’s regulation to help the customer. Emotion work, according to Bolton’s observation is indeed a skilled work in that it is through the employees’ interaction with the customer that the image of the company is portrayed and, therefore, serves as a marketing strategy. Emotion labour is a skilled labour, yet the many of emotion labour are low paying jobs with a low status. Bolton observes that the jobs need to be considered as skilled labour, and employees be provided with their rightful payment as skilled workers. The difficulty in categorising emotion labour arises because the traditional systems of certification find it hard to quantify emotional skills. Then again, the em otional skills are part of the worker this makes the skills to be easily dismissed as personal traits. Then it is argued that most of the workers involved in emotion labour are women. Philips and Taylor say that emotion work involves elements of people work and caring for others this trait is seen as an innate feminine quality (1986, p.55). They argue that women have a natural gift when it comes to handling emotional skills. Korczynski observes the scepticism that surrounds the description of emotion labour skills as real skills. Many believe