For more than two decades, Alicia Grandey, a professor of psychology at Penn State, has been studying how the mistreatment of frontline service workers affects their health and productivity. The behavior she examines ranges from verbal abuse to racial or sexual harassment. She also looks at ambiguous circumstances, in which it’s unclear whether any harm was meant, such as when a customer doesn’t hold the door for an employee walking behind them.
Alicia Grandey
Portrait: Studio Bon
The Emotional Toll of Frontline Labor
An expert explains the costs of providing “service with a smile.”
November 09, 2022
· Long read
Summary.
Customers’ incivility toward frontline employees hurts workers emotionally, physically, and cognitively and can result in lower performance. But these effects are compounded when employees are required to keep providing “service with a smile,” according to psychology professor Alicia Grandey’s research. Companies looking to support their employees in dealing with rude behavior should train them in how to mitigate the effects of incivility, give them autonomy over how to react, and pay them for the emotional labor they perform.
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