Emotional & Aesthetic

Labour'Looking good and sounding fine’

First conceived by Warhurst et al. (2000)

refers to employees bodies being organizationally produced or ‘made up’ to embody the desired aesthetic of the organization and intended to provide for organizational benefit.

Embodied capacities and attributes are, to some extent, possessed by workers at the point of entry into employment. ... And then....

Aesthetic Labour

Employers then...

mobilize, develop, and commodify these embodied dispositions through processes of recruitment, selection, training and management, transforming them into ‘skills’ which are geared towards producing a ‘style’ of service encounter that appeals to the senses of the customer

(Nickson et al. 2001).

Aesthetic Labour

Employee appearance is an integral feature of this economy Bolton (2000), suggests that...

“If emotions have been discovered to be here, there and everywhere in the workplace the same might now be said for aesthetics” (see Felstead et al. 2005: p.7896).

The Age Of Look And Feel

Postrell (2003 p.127) argues that “we are at a tipping point into an ‘aesthetic economy’, heralding the age of look and feel. ...

“When style is strategy, how employees look can be as much a part of the atmosphere [of companies] as the grain of the furniture or the beat of the background music”

Long an important consideration for employers....

C16th... Society of Jesus – selected priests with ‘a pleasing manner of

speech and verbal facility, and also good appearance in the absence of any notable ugliness, disfigurement or deformity’ (Hopfl 2000, p.2034).

C19th... Model Banker - senior banker described as being ‘handsome’

with ‘hazel eyes, aquiline nose, iron-grey hair, firm moustache, oval chin [and] cheeks slightly tinged with red’ (McKinley 2002: p. 607).

C20th... white-collar female department store worker - focuses on

the customer… attracting the customer with modulated voice, artful attire and stance’ (Wright Mills’ 1951: p.175).

Employee appearance

Aesthetic labour is a key feature of employees’ wage effort bargaining.

Like emotional labour different ‘looks’ can be required of employees throughout their aesthetic labouring by different organisations who are targeting different market segments

(Hochschild 1983, Pettinger 2004; Warhurst and Nickson, 2007).

It’s not just ‘good looking’ employees but also employees with the ‘right look’...

Not Just ‘Good Looking’ – The ‘Right Look’

2004 survey of UK retail employers revealed:

90 per cent rated employee appearance as critical or important in recruitment and selection.

61 per cent offered training in dress sense and style,

56 per cent provided other appearance training including in employee body language

34 per cent provide training in personal grooming.

Other UK – US- Australian survey reveal: retail and hospitality employers want customer facing employees with

the right attitude and good appearance, both of which employers perceive of as skills to be employed and then deployed.

(in Nickson et al. (2005),

Is Employee Appearance Critical?

Grugulis et al. (2004)

"there is an increasing tendency for organisations to manage the way their employees feel and look as well as the way they behave, so that work is emotional and aesthetic as well as (or instead of) productive

(Hochschild, 1983; Macdonald and Sirianni, 1996; Warhurst and Nickson, 2001).

Thoughts...????

in the emotional labour literature embodiment is continually debated:

i.e. Hochschild’s (1983: 7) core definition of emotional labour as: ‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display.”

Aesthetic labour showcase embodiment, revealing how employee appearance, not just feelings, are organizationally appropriated, transmuted and controlled for commercial benefit.

Embodiment

In customer-facing occupations employers stressing the importance of prospective employees' personal characteristics Some now specify personal characteristics in lists

of ‘skills’ they require

Thompson et al., 2001 This development is particularly true of interactive

services, such as retailing, where recruitment and training both focus on the emotions and aesthetics of the labour force deployed to deliver the service

Personal Characteristics

Nickson et al., 2001 p.7

“In the ‘style’ labour market of fashionable hotels and bars the appearance, deportment, accents and general stylishness of the bartender, waitress or retail assistant are part of what makes the service being offered trendy and upmarket “

What Makes The Service Better?

(Warhurst and Nickson, 2001, p.14).

XYZ company are “... looking for people who are "passionate, stylish,

confident, tasty, clever, successful and well-travelled”

????

Significance of this practice?

The personnel manager of a hotel was implementing changes in working practices aimed at the reception staff, but complained: 'they just won't smile.'

There are issues here around the extent to which attributes are seen as separate from the person – and as ‘skills’ to be developed.

What are the consequences of this trend?

Nickson et al., 2001 Staff have to look good and sound right and Recruitment and selection processes must try to

ensure that they do

Look Good And Sound Right

But it is not only in this front of house environment that grooming, dress sense, deportment, manner, tone and accent of voice and shape and size of body become vital...”

Nickson et al., 2001 p8.

Workplaces as diverse as call centres, training consultants, investment banks accountants

all recruit, train and promote staff on their ‘emotional and aesthetic ‘skills’

(McDowell, 1997; Trethewey, 1999; Anderson-Gough et al., 2000; Thompson et al., 2001).

Other Service Sectors

If an employer is essentially looking for someone who will project the ‘right image’....

How many people does this rule out, irrespective of the skills they possess???

‘Right Image Vs. Right Skills’.

Many of these characteristics, are open to development and improvement through instruction.

Their possession is a new facet of what it can mean to be ‘skilled’"

Warhurst and Nickson (2001) Grugulis et al., (2004, p.7)

Personality Training?

Language Clothing Body posture, Length of their skirts Hairstyles, Weight Size of bust, hips, thighs... Makeup Perfume Way that they shave (both faces and legs), Jewellery Shoes Colour of their hair etc....

(Hochschild, 1983; Paules, 1991; Warhurst and Nickson, 2001; Nickson et al., 2001; Thompson et al., 2001).

This list is not exclusive, nor is it uncontested but...

Managers may seek to control employees’...

Employees can and do resist, misbehave ignore these instructions,

Or... enthuse, co-operate comply with them

(Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999; Paules, 1991).

Employee Perspectives

In emotional and aesthetic labour, employees’ feelings and appearance are turned into commodities and re-shaped to fit their employers’ notions of what is desirable

(Putnam and Mumby, 1993; Thompson and McHugh, 2002).

Such detailed demands suggest that it is not only the changing definition of skill that is problematic but the site of its control... ?

Re-shaping Emotions

Grugulis et al., 2004, pp7-8) ...

1. Be enjoyed by employees and may equip them with skills that advantage them both in and out of the workplace

(Leidner, 1993; Nickson et al., 2001).

2. Lead to exhaustion, burnout (Hochschild, 1983; Kunda, 1992),

3. Cause an inability to accept or engage with emotions in the private sphere

(Casey, 1995)

4. Cause high levels of turnover (Leidner, 1993; Korczynski, 2001)"

This process can....

"at rock bottom, the real personal and transferable skills required for preferential employment are those of whiteness, maleness and traditional middle-class"

(Ainley 1994, p. 80), and ...

“the particular skills in personal presentation, self-confidence, grooming, deportment and accent that Glaswegian service sector employers are seeking are liable to be linked to the parental social class, and family and educational background of the job applicants"

(Nickson et al. (2003 p. 10).

Grugulis et al. (2004) conclude...

Ackroyd, S. and Thompson, P. (1999) Organizational Misbehaviour, London: Sage.

Ainley, P. (1994). Degrees of Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart. Anderson-Gough, F., Grey, C. and Robson, K. (2000) ‘In the name of the

client: the service ethic in two professional service firms’ Human Relations 53 (9) pp. 1151 – 1174.

Casey, C. (1995) Work, Self and Society: After Industrialism, Routledge: London and New York.

Grugulis, I., Warhurst, C. and Keep, E. (2004) ‘What’s happening to skill? In Warhurst, C., Grugulis, I., and Keep, E. The skills that matter, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Hochschild, A.R. (1983) The Managed Heart, University of California Press: Berkeley.

Korczynski, M. (2001) ‘The contradictions of service work: call centre as customer-oriented bureaucracy’ in Sturdy, A., Grugulis, I. and Willmott, H. (eds.) Customer Service: empowerment and entrapment Basingstoke:Palgrave.

References:

Kunda, G. (1992) Engineering Culture: control and commitment in a High-Tech corporation, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Leidner, R. (1993) Fast Food, Fast Talk: service work and the routinization of everyday life Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Macdonald, C.L. (1996) ‘Shadow mothers: nannies, au pairs, and invisible work’ in Macdonald, C.L. and Sirianni, C. (eds.) Working in the Service Society Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Macdonald, C.L. and Sirianni, C. (1996) (eds.) Working in the Service Society Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

McDowell, L. (1997) Capital Culture: gender at work in the City, Oxford: Blackwells.

Nickson, D., Warhurst, C., Witz, A. and Cullen, A-M. (2001) ‘The importance of being aesthetic: work, employment and service organisation’ in Sturdy, A., Grugulis, I. and Willmott, H. (eds.) Customer Service: empowerment and entrapment Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Nickson, D., Warhurst, C., Witz, A., Cullen, A-M. and Watt, A. (2003) ‘Bringing in the excluded? Aesthetic labour, skills and training in the new economy’, Journal of Education and Work, Vol 16, No 2, 185-203.

References (2)

Paules, G.F. (1991) Dishing it Out: power and resistance among waitresses in a New Jersey restaurant, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Putnam, L. and Mumby, D.K. (1993) ‘Organisations, emotions and the myth of rationality’ in Fineman, S. (ed.) Emotion in Organisations London: Sage.

Thompson, P. and McHugh, D. (2002) Work Organisations: a critical introduction 3rd edition Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Thompson, P., Warhurst, C. and Callaghan, G. (2001) ‘Ignorant Theory and Knowledgeable Workers: Interrogating the connections between knowledge, skills and services’ Journal of Management Studies 38 (7) pp. 923 – 942.

Trethewey, A. (1999) ‘Disciplined bodies: women’s embodied identities at work’ Organization Studies 20 (3) pp. 423 – 450.

Warhurst, C., Nickson, D., Witz, A. and Cullen, A. (2000) ‘Aesthetic Labour in

Interactive Service Work: Some Case Study Evidence from the “New” Glasgow’, Service Industries Journal, 20:3, 118. Warhurst, C. and Nickson, D. (2001) Looking Good, Sounding Right, London:

Industrial Society.

References (3)