Emotional labour within the personal tutor role

Angela Williams

Lecturer

Department of Nursing

School of Health Science

AIM

To identify and discuss emotional labour within

the personal tutor role

Structure

•Introduction & Background

•Organisational structure and process

•Emotional labour within the Personal Tutor role

•Implications

Introduction & background

Implications of widening access to higher education:

•Nature of students (diversity in age, gender, culture, qualifications, experience, expectations, commitments)

•Increased numbers of students

Challenge is to address the needs of large numbers of students with varying needs in a personalised way

Organisational structure and process

Significant emphasis and value is placed on the personal tutor

role within Swansea University and within the School of Health

Science

Organisational structure and process

•Consistent, branch specific personal tutoring throughout the

programme

•Personal tutor time is mandatory, structured and supportive

in purpose

•Personal tutor role incorporates group reflection with personal

tutor students following each clinical placement

Emotional Labour (Hochschild 1983)

Based on flight attendants, emotional labour described as,

“the induction or suppression of feeling in order to sustain an

outward appearance that produces in others a sense of being

cared for in a convivial safe place” (p7)

Work requiring emotional labour (Hochschild 1983)

•Face or voice contact with the public

•Requires the worker to produce an emotional response in

another e.g. gratitude

•Enables the employer through training to exercise a degree of

control of employees’ emotional activities

James (1989) emotional labour

“labour involved in dealing with other people’s feelings, a core

component of which is the regulation of emotions” (p15)

Key features of emotional labour (James 1992)

•Hard work

•Regulation and management of feeling

•Action and reaction

•Doing and being

•Demanding, skilled work

•Personal exchange

•Can be used for commercial purposes

•A pretence

•Response to common situations

•Subject to gender discussions

James (1989)

“Emotional labour is hard work and can be sorrowful and

difficult. It demands that the labourer gives personal attention

which means they must give something of themselves, not just

a formulaic response” (p18)

Emotional labour within the personal tutor role

Working with our emotions in dealing with student’s emotions:

•Dealing with student’s feelings relating to study (anger,

disappointment, grief, frustration, elation)

•Dealing with student’s problems (mental/physical illness,

isolation, abuse, bereavement, divorce, relationship problems)

Emotional labour within personal tutor role

Working with our emotions:

•Students who are ‘difficult’ to manage (demanding, lack

commitment, reluctant to take responsibility - may be ‘unpopular’)

•Relationship has potential for attachment and emotional

involvement (Menzies 1960)

•Personal tutors can experience a range of feelings such as care,

concern, protection, responsibility, empathy and frustration

•These feelings have to be managed

Implications of emotional labour

Smith (1992) highlighted the importance of:

• supportive environment

• effective leadership

• role modelling and

• valuing of emotion work

as crucial for student nurses to care for patients.

Support for personal tutors

Needs to be recognised and supported through formal and

informal organisational mechanisms (e.g. clinical supervision,

mentorship)

Research

Research is crucial to illuminate the facets of emotional labour

specifically within the personal tutor role

References

Hoschild A.R (1983) The managed heart: commercialisation of human feeling, Berkeley, University of California Press

James N. (1992) Care = organisation + physical labour + emotional labour, Sociology of health and illness, 14 (4) 489-509

James N. (1989) Emotional labour: skill and work in the social regulation of feelings, Sociological Review, 37, 15-42

Smith P. (1992) The Emotional Labour of Nursing, London, Macmillan