Examining the Frontlines of Human Services Nonprofits: The Role of Emotional Labor in Exit, Voice, Loyalty and Neglec

Nonprofit employees, specifically within human services organizations, often find meaning in their work and are able to connect their work with their personal values despite their emotionally charged work environments. Many of the clients are engaged in crisis situations (i.e. home foreclosures, homelessness, credit counseling, and domestic abuse) that require the employee to invoke an emotion to offer a service to the client. This type of work is referred to as emotional labor. Sociologist Arlise Hochschild (1983) defined emotional labor as an employee's ability to "induce or suppress feelings in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others". There has been very little focus on emotional labor within the nonprofit management literature and its role in productivity for nonprofit organizations. However, in an effort to meet the needs of the community, it is important to understand the work attitudes of employees who may deal with distressed clients who are leaning to the organization to provide some relief and ultimately, change their quality of life. This becomes a critical point particularly in a stressed fiscal environment that has pressured many nonprofits to execute their mission and develop innovative means to implement more programmatic efforts with fewer resources. Therefore, this research seeks to understand how frontline human service nonprofit employees' are impacted when engaging with their clients through the lens emotional labor. Twenty-one human services nonprofit organizations within the South Atlantic Region participated in the study. Personal efficacy and false face acting had a significant relationship with job satisfaction. Additionally, job satisfaction had a significant relationship with exit, voice, loyalty and neglect. Overall, the results of this research confirmed the importance of emotional labor and an employee's behavioral intentions based on their perception of their level of job satisfaction. More studies are needed to understand the complexities of how emotional labor may impact their work attitudes and influence their behavioral intentions.