Coping with emotional labor in high stress hospitality work environments

ABSTRACT

Hospitality environments, particularly casino VIP rooms, are often overlooked as “high stress” work environments. Faced with challenging work situations, frontline employees experience tremendous emotional demands during interpersonal interactions. As this leads to emotional exhaustion, frontline employees must find ways of managing emotional labor through coping strategies to reduce its negative impacts. This research explores strategies that VIP room’s frontline employees use in coping with emotional demands. The research identifies four families of strategies: opposition, rumination, emotional regulation, and positive cognitive restructuring, corresponding to surface acting, deep acting and genuine emotions, respectively. The study opens new avenues for further understanding of the coping and emotional labor concepts.

摘要

酒店环境，尤其是赌场贵宾室，通常被视为“高压力”工作环境而忽视.面对挑战性的工作环境，一线员工在人际交往中经历了巨大的情感需求.由于这会导致情绪衰竭，一线员工必须通过应对策略找到管理情绪劳动的方法，以减少其负面影响.本研究探讨了贵宾室一线员工在处理情感需求时的策略.研究确定了四个策略家族：反对、反刍、情绪调节和积极的认知重建，分别对应于表面行为、深层行为和真实情感.这项研究为进一步理解应对和情绪劳动概念开辟了新的途径.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional demands
• emotional labor
• coping
• casino VIP rooms