View From the Trenches: Practitioners’ Perspectives on Key Issues and Opportunities in Low-Wage and Frontline Jobs

Abstract

Moving forward indirectly: Reanalyzing the validity of employment interviews with indirect range restriction methodology.

Engagement as a Privilege and Disengagement as a Pathology

“…Emotional labor occurs within LSLW workers as they mask their personal distaste for the work or cope with the negative reactions to their work by others (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Noah, 2013). These negative reactions can occur via mistreatment by customers, too, as LSLW work includes many customer-facing jobs (Sliter, Holland, Sliter, & Jones, 2016). More acutely, that depletion of resources supports a negative relationship between stigmatization and engagement (Baran et al, 2012; Stacey, 2005), as does the feeling that the LSLW worker is not “needed, necessary, or wanted,” as succinctly summarized by an analysis of exit interviews by The Landmark Plastic Company (Shipler, 2004, p. 133).…”

“…Kahn’s initial conceptualization of engagement treats health as constant, and contextual health, or a very narrow spectrum of health, as variable (e.g., health is based on demands of work; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; health based on positive self-evaluations; Bakker et al, 2014). Importantly, studies on engagement often position health as an outcome of engagement, rather than a predictor or part of a recursive model of engagement and wellness (Christian et al, 2011; Schaufeli, Bakker, & Van Rhenen, 2009; Sliter et al, 2016), a phenomenon not limited solely to engagement (Sliter et al, 2016). These shortcomings become a salient concern for engagement researchers when considering chronic health deficiencies of which workers have no daily direct control, such as depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress disorder (Compton, Conway, Stinson, & Grant, 2006).…”

“…Job crafting’s inaccessibility is also likely when considering the intersection of LSLW contingent worker status and health. More and more LSLW contingent work jobs are held by individuals who are also likely to have reduced health outcomes (Chetty et al, 2016; Ogden, Lamb, Carroll, & Flegal, 2010; Sliter et al, 2016). Job crafting requires effort —you take on the responsibility to seek challenges and you try to reduce demands to improve your engagement (Petrou et al, 2012)—and is a process the worker owns.…”