Understanding how millennial hospitality employees deal with emotional labour

Abstract

Qualified employees are the most valuable assets in today’s environment and this requires that employers understand and engage their employees. One process that might influence their happiness at work is emotional labour. Emotional labour entails that an employee tries to feel, create and display emotions that are expected by the guest. This means that employees occasionally need to suppress certain emotions and put on “a mask”. In a service interaction, emotional labour is key to achieving guest satisfaction. An industry that relies heavily on these service interactions is the hospitality industry. The greater part of the millennial generation is already in the labour market and working in the hospitality industry. This generation is known for their special traits and work values. The millennials want to have a good work-life balance, a meaningful job and want to feel happy at work, otherwise they quickly switch to another job. This master’s dissertation’s exploratory study aims at understanding how the millennials deal with emotional labour by focusing on their perception of the job. Data will be collected via semi-structured interviews with 14 front-line employees working in a four-star hotel in the north of the Netherlands. Even though both the millennials and the concept of emotional labour have been investigated by many researchers, it seems a combination of both has rarely been represented. This research in progress responds to this gap in research by combining both subjects in the context of the hospitality industry. Moreover, it wants to contribute to practice by providing practical applications for hospitality practitioners.

Keywords: emotional labour, hospitality, job perception, millennials