A Study of Emotional Labor of HR Staff in Taipei City Government
Irving Yi-Feng Huang, Szu-Chien Wu,Yen-Hung Chen *
Abstract
Required to offer customer-oriented services, organizational employees need to employ proper emotional labor -- which refers to efforts at managing emotions including facial expression, body language, and voices -- to satisfy clients. Research literature indicates that burnout will be caused when employees are required to restrain emotions too much.
It’s a common rule in democratic society that government employees are public servants who are supposed to provide kind, fast and convenient services to citizens. In Taiwan, HR staff are required to act as ‘servants to the civil servants’ by providing HR services to government employees, i.e. internal customers. A survey questionnaire was distributed to the HR staff in Taipei City Government in 2012 to explore their perceptions about emotional labor, burnout, and job satisfaction. After factor analysis, emotional labor can be categorized into three factors -- primary emotion, surface-acting, and deep-acting. The statistics indicate that there are significant differences among education, age, and position of subjects. The regression analysis indicates that the more an HR staff member gets at surface-acting and expressing primary emotion, the higher his or her job satisfaction will be. The more his primary emotion gets expressed, the less will be his chances of burnout. And the more one gets at deep-acting and surface-acting, the more will be one’s chances of burnout.
This paper, as a pilot study, explores some meaningful results which can encourage further research based on a larger sample size.
Keywords:emotional labor, government HR staff, customer orientation
* Irving Yi-Feng Huang, Associate Professor and Chair, Dept. of Public Administration, Tamkang University.
Szu-Chien Wu, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Administration management, Central Police University.
Yen-Hung Chen, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Public Affairs, Fo Guang University.