LA EDUCOMUNICACIÓN Amp

Jamrog and Overholt (2004) noted that management often expects HR practitioners to go beyond their normal day-to-day administrative services and provide expertise on how to resolve difficult workplace issues, leading to role conflict or other negative work-related consequences for the HR practitioner. In the light of HR practitioners, role conflict can be described “in terms of the dimensions of congruency-incongruency or compatibility- incompatibility in the requirements of the role, where congruency or compatibility is judged relative to a set of expectations” (Sheehan et al., 2016, p. 357). Applying this definition to HR practitioners’ multifaceted work and role expectations (O’Brien & Linehan, 2014; Sheehan et al., 2016), Du Plessis et al. (2012, p. 17) contend that any “person performing HR roles need to be equipped with distinct capabilities that support the expectations, challenges and requirements of their roles and responsibilities”.

The HR practitioners’ role is complicated by them having different constituencies to serve, namely, the employees, line managers and top management, each with unique and frequently conflicting expectations and power differences. To navigate the ‘power

13 _{See Chapter 1 section 1.1} 14 _Ibid.

differences’ was found to affect the quality of employees, HR practitioners and top-line management relationships, adding to HR practitioners’ role conflict (Heizmann & Fox, 2017). Having different constituencies to serve, create role conflict and ambiguity for the HR practitioner (Sheehan et al., 2016), because of the competing demands by top management, line managers and employees, which Ulrich and Brockbank (2005) and Gratton and Truss (2003) maintain should rather be consistent and coherent with each other if they are to add value to the organisation. HR practitioners also have to protect the organisation from litigation and bad reputation, with a responsibility to support the organisation’s customers (Cascio & Aguinis, 2008; Gerard et al., 2010; Jerkins, 2011; Lewis & Rayner, 2003) which is a further constituency expectation they serve. According to O’Brien and Linehan (2014), the complex duality and paradox underlying the HR practitioner’s role stem from serving different stakeholder demands, creating emotional challenges in their daily functioning that are often ignored. The HR practitioners’ role is therefore complicated by them having different constituencies to which they have to account, with conflicting expectations, having the potential to impact negatively on their ability to perform at work, on their overall emotions, health, wellbeing, and career goals. It should be noted that the idea of wellbeing is discussed under heading 4.4 “management of workplace bullying in the organisation”, to be discussed below. I now discuss emotions underlying HR practitioners’ role.

Emotions in the workplace and HR practitioners’ role seem interlinked, particularly taking into account the different constituencies HR practitioners have to serve. Different organisations’ constituencies operate through their thoughts and feelings and are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions (Grandey & Melloy, 2017), while at the same time their emotions affect the HR practitioner’s roles and feelings (O’Brien & Linehan, 2014). The term ‘emotions in the workplace’ refers to a positive or negative event, experience or occurrence that is associated with states of feeling that result in a subjective experience, cognitive processes and expressive behaviour, with physical and psychological changes that influence behaviour (Daniel, 2011; Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner & Hood, 2011; Hochschild, 1983; Myers, 2004). Positive emotions (either from personal life or workplace) have beneficial effects on the working relations, creativity, productivity, wellbeing and increases in team spirit (Ouzouni, 2016). Negative emotions have the opposite effect, such as the absence of willingness to work together. Poor working relations and the lack of guidance or support are possible causes of conflicting roles and expectations, stress, frustration and aggressive behaviour (Grandey & Melloy, 2017; Ouzouni, 2016).

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Building on Hochschild (1983, 1993), O’Brien and Linehan (2014) make a distinction between ‘emotion work’ and ‘emotional labour’ underlying the role of an HR practitioner. The former describes people’s “everyday interactions to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display”, while the latter defines a process of management within the organisational context and “occurs when rules and guidelines defining the appropriate display of feelings and expressions dictate an outward response that conflicts with the emotion felt inside” (O’Brien & Linehan, 2014, p. 1259). HR practitioners are expected to manage and regulate stakeholders’ emotions and at the same time encourage self- regulation, that is, feelings and expression, and abide by the emotional display rules and guidelines of their roles, which are sometimes contradictory. Sideman and Grandey (in Grandey & Melloy, 2017) noted that when employees responsible for mediation and resolution management interacted with hostile employees the requirement to regulate emotions decreased work satisfaction and performance, compared with employees whose emotion regulation was under personal control. Achieving emotional balance is a challenging pursuit for the HR practitioners, putting pressure on them to abide by emotion display requirements or to display a wide variety of emotions, depending on the particular situation (O’Brien & Linehan, 2014). This view demonstrates how emotional labour may influence and add to HR practitioners’ role conflict and dilemmas in addressing and managing work-related issues such as workplace bullying. Grandey and Melloy (2017, p. 894) further explain that the “purposes of emotion regulation are reduction of subjective distress and reduction in the frequency of unacceptable emotion related behaviours”, gaining social support and cooperation.

The influence of emotional labour is argued as critical, inter alia, to the HR practitioner’s role and wellbeing as well as to an organisation’s success (O’Brien & Linehan, 2014). Given the nature of HR practitioners’ role, a low power position in organisations and the emotion engendering the duality and paradox they face, emotional labour (i.e., management of emotional expression and feeling) is a piece of puzzle missing in HR practitioners day-to-day requirements and functioning. Despite the paucity of research on the emotional challenges inherent in HR roles, I agree with O’Brien and Linehan’s view that management of feeling and emotional expression is a useful approach that seems to be applicable to different constituencies, regardless of demographics, diversity, levels or status in handling the role conflict and ambiguity that arise out of the duality, and is even an important aspect of HR practitioners’ role in achieving emotional balance.

People who work in an environment characterised by the conflicting expectations of employer and employee, extends the challenging effect of emotional labour and can

result in higher absenteeism and staff turnover, high medical or insurance costs (Duffy & Sperry, 2007; Keashly & Harvey, 2006; Lewis & Orford, 2005), and reduced promotional opportunities and professional status (Namie & Namie, 2011). The HR practitioners’ role in addressing employees’ wellbeing-related issues, such as workplace bullying, is thus challenged, in particular due to role conflict emanating from different and often paradoxical expectations.