Emotional Labor Of First-line Social Workers

With the continuous progress and development of society,the development of professional social work has gradually received the attention of all sectors of society.In the work reports of the Party and the government,there are many goals to strengthen the construction of social work personnel and improve the development of professional social work.But in reality,the development of social work is slow,facing a series of important problems such as high turnover rate and large gap of social workers.In essence,social workers belong to service workers.The initial research only focused on the physical labor of service personnel,focusing on improving their performance.In recent years,the emotional labor of service personnel has gradually been taken seriously,which is regarded as the third kind of labor.Emotional labor refers to the management of employees’ internal emotions in the process of dealing with customers in order to obtain wages and create behaviors and expressions that meet organizational requirements.On the whole,it can be divided into two dimensions: emotional labor expression(positive emotional expression,negative emotional expression)and emotional labor strategy(deep behavior,surface behavior).Previous studies on emotional labor mostly used variable-centered research methods,focusing on "variables" while ignoring the individual’s uniqueness.However,the few individual-centered studies on emotional labor do not focus on public service workers,and neglect the dimension of emotional labor expression,which may have an impact on the integrity and accuracy of emotional labor classification.Therefore,in order to understand the emotional labor status of front-line social workers,this study takes the staff of social work service institutions in Shanghai,Guangdong,Beijing,Wuhan and Sichuan as the research object,and uses self-rating scale to measure the emotional labor,service-oriented leadership,organizational identity,job performance,self-efficacy,job burnout and turnover intention.A total of 681 valid questionnaires were collected.Through potential profile analysis,a potential profile model of emotional labor of social workers at the front line is obtained.On this basis,this paper explores thecharacteristics of emotional labor of different types of front-line social workers,its mechanism and the relationship with relevant variables.The following conclusions are drawn from the study:(1)Taking the four dimensions of emotional labor as the classification index,it is concluded that the emotional labor of social workers can be divided into three types:inaction type(2.5%),selective coping type(88.8%)and flexible coping type(8.7%).At present,most of the front-line social workers belong to selective coping type.(2)There are significant differences in positive emotional expression,negative emotional expression,deep behavior and surface behavior among different types of social workers.Flexible coping style is at a high level in four aspects.Front-line social workers use both emotional labor expression and emotional labor strategy when facing emotional labor.However,most social workers tend to use positive emotional expression and deep-seated behavior strategy when facing emotional labor.(3)Different types of front-line social workers have different mechanisms of emotional labor.Flexible coping social workers can flexibly choose emotional labor expression and emotional labor strategy according to specific circumstances;but inactive and selective coping social workers will choose the surface behavior strategy of "disguise" when facing negative emotional expression.(4)There are significant differences in organizational identity,job burnout,job performance and other related variables among different types of social workers: flexible coping social workers have a higher level of organizational identity,job performance and self-efficacy,and are the best social workers,but they are facing a high level of job burnout and turnover intention;inactive social workers are in the group.The lowest level of organizational identity,job performance and self-efficacy is the worst social worker.