Frontline Service Employees' Profiles: Exploring Individual Differences in Perceptions of and Reactions to Workplace Incivility.

Boshra H Namin,Åse Helene Bakkevig Dagsland,Einar Marnburg

doi:10.3390/bs12030076

Boshra H Namin, Åse Helene Bakkevig Dagsland + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12030076

Copy DOI

Abstract

Employee turnover is a big issue in the service industry, which can be significantly affected by job stressors including workplace incivility. This exploratory study aims to identify the frontline service employees’ profiles exploring to what extent individuals may have different perceptions of incivility and social supports at work and showing different reactions (job outcomes). In a cross-sectional study, 291 completed questionnaires from a sample of Norwegian frontline service employees were subjected to correlation analysis, K-means clustering, and post hoc ANOVA analysis with Bonferroni correction. Cluster analysis revealed three distinct clusters of employees with different profiles, which indicated that those who perceived the highest level of workplace incivility and the lowest level of social supports at work showed the highest turnover intention compared to that of others. Moreover, employees with longer tenure and the highest perception of social supports at work coped better with workplace incivility and showed the lowest turnover intention.

Highlights

The “turnover issue” in tourism and hospitality has received enormous research interest in the last decade
Significant positive correlations were found between workplace incivility and emotional exhaustion (0.28 for both customer and coworker incivility)
Customer incivility did not show a significant correlation with both turnover intention (0.08) and job performance (0.10), while coworker incivility showed a significant correlation with turnover intention (0.17)

Summary

Introduction

The “turnover issue” in tourism and hospitality has received enormous research interest in the last decade. The significant role of frontline service employees is confirmed by both managers and scholars, research has consistently indicated that service employees are generally untrained, overworked, and highly stressed [4]. Not surprisingly, their turnover intentions have been asserted as one of the important and continuous challenges for service managers [1,5], since high turnover gives high recruiting costs, problems with a stable level of service delivery, and may have a negative influence on the work environment. As a consequence of the specific attributes of service jobs including deep-rooted stress [9], reliance on coworkers [7], and the close connection between frontline employees’ performance and customer encounters in the service industry [10], these employees are targeted to incivility from two main internal and external sources (i.e., coworker and customer) in their daily working life

Methods

Results

Conclusion