Abstract
This chapter examines the importance of recognizing the emotional labor inherent in public service delivery and suggests several approaches that organizations can use to support emotional labor demands on staff, with an emphasis on health and social care. Emotional labor has been identified as a key element of future public service work (Needham and Mangan in The 21st century public servant. University of Birmingham, 2014). Whilst a country’s policy context highlights the importance of delivering public services that meet the needs of the recipients, this may do little to support implementation. This chapter outlines the need to recognize that delivering services is hard emotional labor, and that organizations need to support their workforce to enable them to do this well.
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Mastracchi, S., Sawbridge, Y. (2019). Showing You Care: Emotional Labor and Public Service Work. In: Dickinson, H., Needham, C., Mangan, C., Sullivan, H. (eds) Reimagining the Future Public Service Workforce. SpringerBriefs in Political Science. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1480-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1480-3_3
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