A PolyU study provides insights on talent recruitment.
Dr Wing Lam
Organisations put a lot of effort into selecting employees that best fit the job requirements, because they know that hiring the wrong person can be extremely costly. However, a recent study led by Dr Wing Lam at the Department of Management and Marketing, suggests that the right skills may not be enough if the employee is not in accord with the organisation’s value.
The study explored employee fit in a large five-star hotel in mainland China. Employees are particularly important for service-oriented sectors, where customers’ evaluations of the hotel are largely dependent on the quality of their interactions with the hotel employees. Employees are expected to present a cheerful and friendly demeanour to ensure high quality of service interaction, yet it takes effort to manage and display such emotions effectively. This effort is referred to as “emotional labour”.
While some employees are able to modify their inner feelings to match the required emotional expression (deep acting) at work, others suppress their real feelings and fake the required emotions (surface acting). The researchers reasoned that employees who use deep acting are better able to fulfill the emotion requirements of the organisation and have the ability to get a deeper understanding of customers’ needs and demands. The researchers measured a group of employees’ person-job and person-organisation fit, and assessed whether they tended to use deep or surface acting. They then asked hotel guests about the quality of service interactions with the same employees, and their satisfaction with the service.
The findings showed that customers’ perceptions of service quality and satisfaction with service were related to good person-job fit. However, the effect was only evident when person-organisation fit was also high, because employees who agreed with the organisation’s values were more likely to engage in deep acting. The researchers further explained that although employees might be happy with what the job offers, if their values did not fit with those of the organisation, they would not embrace the value of serving customers and tend to conform just to keep their jobs.
Organisations that would like to improve their service quality should explain the reasons behind “service with a smile” to ensure employees show genuine care in their customer interactions.♦
