Case assignment
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Question 1
Employees at Pret A Manger normally get bonuses and rewards whenever they deliver outstanding customer service (Noah, 2013). The Managers of the company are committed heavily investing in efforts to make certain that the reputation and services of the firm remain outstanding ahead of its rivals. Employees are exposed to emotional labor, which if handled appropriately can bring positive benefits for the staff since employees exploit emotional labor to mobilize resources in order to carry out their job effectively. Employees can take advantage of emotional labor to develop capacity to mobilize their social skills to give sense and meaning to their work. Pret A Manger expects employees to be happy at work and this is the reason the company recruits employees who have potentials to adopt “Pret behaviors” that include being happy, genuinely friendly and enthusiastic to be themselves. The firm enforces such behaviors using a system of assessment and surveillance.
Emotional labor is not always a constraint because employees can obtain positive benefits out of it. Staff can develop emotional labor and social skills to survive and give meaning to their job, which can lead to job satisfaction and performance (Clifford, 2011). In this way, employees are deep acting when they transform their feelings during delivering customer service in order to fulfill customer and organizational expectations. Employees manage their feelings according to the management’s expectations to positively respond to the company’s obligations in a sincere manner and also this helps them to save their job. Emotional work represents human tasks that involve social relations. Emotional work is something intrinsic and therefore staff should not see it as a command enforced by the company. Having such a positive attitude can enable employees give extra customer care, which can lead to high job performance and satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Question 2
However, employees might also experience negative consequences when they are exposed to heavy emotional labor. It can be argued that Pret’s emotional labor is too much demanding and thus is considered as dehumanizing, exploitative and demeaning. Heavy emotional labor can force staff to fake feelings, which as a result can lead to negative consequences (Goodman, 2011). Emotional labor exposes employees to work pressure of a double impact from the expectations of both customers and the company. Based on such conditions, different reactions from resistance, consentment, constraints to resignation remain highly possible among employees.
Acting happily when an employee does not genuinely feel happy is something that can cause emotional dissonance which consequently can lead to poor job satisfaction, low mood, and burnout. Moreover, monetizing emotion is something that can reduce the sense of intrinsic value of employee commitment in their jobs. Noah (2013) explains that acting fake feelings can inhibit employees’ ability not only to demonstrate their emotions, but also feel empathy for the client (customer). In this way, em...