The cost of service : exploring customer interactions and emotional labour on front-line employees’ emotional exhaustion and ambulatory blood pressure

Abstract

Front-line employees are the representatives of many organizations. These employees are expected to satisfy all customers’ needs with a smile on their face. Although employees may appear satisfied while interacting with customers, research reveals that many frontline employees are suppressing their own emotions to act in way that is more favourable for the organization, which is known as emotional labour (Morris & Feldman, 1996). The negative consequences of emotional labour are robust (e.g., Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011), however research has yet to explore the relationship between emotional labour and physiological measures. Restaurant servers and bartenders (N = 41) wore a blood pressure monitor for one working day and completed hourly 3-minute diary entries after their blood pressure was taken. Using multilevel modelling, the study’s results demonstrated that deep acting predicted emotional exhaustion over time, and emotional exhaustion predicted higher blood pressure over time.