Abstract
The main objective of this study was to determine if emotional labour has become a criterion in performance appraisal, job description, selection, and training schemes in the hotel industry in Nigeria. Our main assumption was that majority of hotel organizations have not built emotional labour into their human resources management schemes. Data were gathered by the use of structured questionnaires designed in Likert format, and interviews. The focus group was managers of the selected hotels. Analyses revealed that majority of the hotels have not built emotional labour into their human resources schemes particularly in the 1, 2, and 3-star hotels. It was observed that service employees of 1, 2, and 3-star hotels have not been adequately trained to perform emotional labour, a critical factor in quality service delivery. Managers of 1, 2, and 3-star hotels have not given serious thought to emotional labour as a critical factor in quality service delivery. The study revealed that suitability of an individuals characteristics is not being considered as a criterion for selection and performance appraisal for service employees. The implication of this is that, person-job-fit is not seriously considered. It was observed that there has been a disconnect between required emotional competency, its recognition, evaluation and training. Based on the findings of this study, it is concluded that selection, training, job description and performance appraisal instruments in use in hotels in Nigeria are inadequate. Human resource implications of the findings in this study are presented. It is recommended that hotel organizations should re-design and plan the emotional content and context of their human resources practices to reflect the emotional demands of frontline jobs in the hotel industry and the crucial role emotional labor plays during service encounters.
Highlights
The main objective of this study was to determine if emotional labour has become a criterion in performance appraisal, job description, selection, and training schemes in the hotel industry in Nigeria
Given the crucial role emotional labour plays in service excellence and the negative effects associated with its performance, it is imperative that suitable service employees are selected and trained to cope with the demands associated with the performance of such labour, so that their well-being is not affected and subsequent interactions with customers are not tarnished
For the 1-star hotels, the mean of 0.56 (SD=0.60) means that emotional labour has no place in their performance appraisal scheme
Summary
The main objective of this study was to determine if emotional labour has become a criterion in performance appraisal, job description, selection, and training schemes in the hotel industry in Nigeria. It was observed that service employees of 1, 2, and 3-star hotels have not been adequately trained to perform emotional labour; a critical factor in quality service delivery. The study revealed that suitability of an individual’s characteristics is not being considered as a criterion for selection and performance appraisal for service employees The implication of this is that, person-job-fit is not seriously considered. Hospitality service environment is so challenging because some of the customers arrive at the establishments with negative emotions while attempting to run away from unpleasant situations encountered at their homes, workplaces, society etc Many a time, these customers use hotel workers as inanimate objects (scapegoat) for venting their frustration. It is not built into job descriptions, performance appraisals, and reward system (Guy et al, 2008)
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