ABSTRACT
Customer service work involves specific psychosocial risks and has been of interest to researchers for many years. A particular psychosocial risk factor in this occupational group is direct customer contact, entailing various emotional demands. According to the latest EWCS report, in the European Union, 31% of workers are expected to hide feelings at work at all times, or nearly at all times [2017]. The highest percentage of employees who are confronted with such job demands work in the services sector: health care (44%), public administration (38%), education (36%), retail and hospitality (36%) and finance (35%). In these sectors, workers also face customer anger more frequently than the EU average. At least three quarters of the working time is spent on handling abusive customers in the following sectors: healthcare (26%), education (22%), retail and hospitality (20%), finance (19%) and public administration (17%) [Parent-Thirion et al. 2017]. Lastly, emotionally demanding conditions make up three quarters of the working time for 22% of healthcare workers, 13% of public administration workers, and 11% of education workers.
According to the Statistics Poland (GUS) data [GUS 2014], the highest number of workers exposed to violence or threats of violence, and bullying or intimidation at the workplace (one or both factors), was recorded in the “Public administration and national defense” and “Social and health insurance” sectors (7.4% of workers), followed by the “Administration and social services” sector (6.9% of workers). Such a high workplace bullying rate suggests that these sectors’ workers are much more exposed to stressful interactions with customers, or high emotional demands at work.
