…When service experience professionals engage in helpful but unethical actions
The work of a front line, customer-facing employee is not for the faint-hearted. That’s a fact. Unfortunately, it seems we have been framed to believe that the people best suited to deal with customers regularly are rather the dainty and delicate ones. In my experience, corporate organisations are so fixated on this idea to man the front office with just those who appeal to us aesthetically without considering what these individuals are made of. We scarcely consider the mettle of the individual. If the person is considered beautiful or handsome enough, that is enough.
The truth is that it takes more than a fine face or a beautiful smile to survive and thrive as a customer service employee. The job can do a lot of damage to an individual who lacks the inner fortitude. Dealing with different people, from different backgrounds, with different dispositions and having different motivations can be one of the toughest jobs one can ever get to do. If you add the fact that one is having to manage all these different individuals in rapid succession, you get to appreciate the gravity of the situation.
Sometimes, it is not so much the busyness of the schedule on a daily basis. It is not even the sometimes debilitating tiredness one feels after each day. Depending on where one find’s oneself, the physical labour can be demanding. However, that can be handled with a good night’s rest.
Sometimes, it is the emotional labour one has to exert that gets to the one. It is the weight of the emotions of the job that does the most damage. Getting rid of these emotions does not come with just a good night’s sleep. It takes more.
When one considers the truth that the emotional baggage from work also tends to follow the individual home, then the enormity of the job becomes a lot clearer. There are customer service professionals who have had to go counselling, just to stay sane. These are the realities of the job. It is not all smiles and hugs as many senior managers would want to believe.
One of the issues that front line employees have to deal with is how to always make the organisation look good in the eyes of the customer, regardless of the truth and the reality on the ground. It is expected of a customer-facing professional to always act in ways that would be beneficial to the organisation first. This makes sense. After all, the employee works for the business and therefore the organisation’s needs and objectives must be placed above all else—sometimes, even above the needs and objectives of the employee. Such actions taken by front line employees that inure to the benefit of the organisation are known as pro-organisational behaviours.
However, acting in the interest of the organisation, might mean that sometimes, the customer service professional has to resort to actions that are unethical, such as having to tell an outright lie to save face for the organisation. This seemingly insignificant matter has been known to be another of the sources of stress that complicates the life of the customer service professional. Acting unethically is not something many people can do, without feeling bad about it. Therefore, regardless of whether it is for the benefit of the organisation or not, acting unethically tends to tear the individual apart.
A paper presented in the August 2019 edition of the Academy of Management Proceedings threw some interesting light on this subject matter. The paper was titled, “Helping the Organization but Harming Yourself: Consequences of Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior.” The researchers regarded the concept of unethical but pro-organisational behaviour as a moral paradox. This is because on the one hand, it is good for the organisation but on the other hand, it turns out not be so good for the employee.
The study was of the view that by eliciting both negative moral emotions as well as positive moral emotions, unethical pro-organisational behaviour ends up putting the employee in a state of emotional ambivalence. On one hand, the employee feels a sense of pride for having done something to help the organisation. However, on the other hand, there is the feeling of guilt because the employee knows he or she had to peddle an untruth.
The researchers claim that this ambivalence creates a state of anxiety within the individual. This anxiety, it is said, has the tendency to follow the employee home, thereby increasing the one’s work-to-life conflict. This anxiety spillover is something that can plague individuals, leaving them in a state of distress.
The truth is that society has expectations of each and every individual. People are expected to behave in ways that are ethical towards each other. The importance of these expectations to the proper functioning of society is that there are consequences when individuals fall short of these expectations. Unfortunately, as can be deciphered from the ongoing discussion, there are times when the one’s behaviour at work contradicts the one’s life outside the work.
A person who has had to lie at work just to make a deal go through will not feel too good when she gets home. If she is someone with a strong moral upbringing, then her behaviour at work will be in direct conflict with the expectations she places on herself outside of work. If you add the fact that this lady might be a staunch member of a religious body, then her guilt might ratchet up when she leaves the office. Evidently, an employee in that state of mind will not be in the best of positions to offer customers the best of services and therefore, the best of customer experiences.
The phenomenon of unethical pro-organisational behaviour is quite common. As a matter of fact, it is common practice for some front line professionals to resort to all kinds and shades of lies just to make a sale. They see absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of behaviour. There are several stories of ladies in the banking industry who have to employ all kinds of unethical tactics just to meet targets. These ladies bring in the big accounts but the question is, at what cost? What do these ladies have to give up emotionally just to win accounts for their banks? We might never really know.
Another example of unethical but pro-organisational behaviour involves accountants falsifying company accounts just to boost the stock value of the company. Or those who would go to the extent of hiding information that would be damaging to the reputation and, thereby, the fortunes of the business. Hiding information from customers and the general public might even include destroying such information.
It is known, however, that not everyone is cut out for this kind of unethical behaviour. There are those who suffer immensely when they have to tell lies to customers just to help their organisations. There is a story of a former banker who claimed that when he had to tell lies to customers, he actually suffered panic attacks. He went on to say that he even had nightmares when he thought of those times.
What makes some of these actions even more stressful is that some might border on outright criminality. Therefore, an employee who perpetrates such an act will always live in fear—fear of being found out and being prosecuted for it. In most of the cases of unethical pro-ethical behaviours, the action taken by the employee does not have the expressed approval of a superior nor is it stated in any formal document. In other words, these are actions employees take for their organisations just because they believe it is the best thing to do at the time. But this also means that if something were to go wrong and the issue comes out, those employees would be all on their own.
If the employee works in a team, and for a manager that would not stand behind the employee if something goes wrong, then the employee would be in the worst position possible. Knowing you did something unethical for the good of your company but for which you would end up suffering alone can add to your stress. And if the behaviour is one that can lead to real jail time, the individual becomes greatly conflicted within.
It is clear that not every customer-facing professional has the stomach for any kind of unethical behaviour. The toll it takes on the individual will inadvertently affect the one and if the one’s role involves dealing with customers on a consistent basis, then it is the customer who would end up suffering. An internally conflicted employee would struggle to give off his or her very best.
From the ongoing, it is clear that our proclivity to put only those who are only pleasing to the eyes without getting to know what they are made of must be reconsidered. Human capital managers have a duty to ensure that those who have to deal with customers on a regular have what it takes to do so without withering under the pressure.
Due to the negative effects of unethical pro-organisational behaviour, it is important for managers to also ensure that the key performance indicators that customer-facing employees have to meet are not going to push those employees to resort to unethical means. As important as it is to meet corporate objectives, these objectives must be met without employees having to “sell their souls”. Organisations must live out their core values.
It is even recommended that organisations even go ahead to set up awards for employees based on how ethical they go about their activities. Additionally, organisations must also make available to employees, especially those who interact with customers regularly, opportunities to work out their anxieties. Counselling sessions facilitated by exerts should be encouraged. Recreational activities should be instituted as part of a company-wide strategy to manage work-to-life conflict.
For as long as there are customers to serve, there would always be those instances where customer handling employees must make decisions that might not be ethical. The decision might rest with the individual but it is important that the organisation recognises this and put in measures to help the employee. This is so as to ensure that those who face customers daily are not harbouring negative feelings from having done things that are tearing them apart. In this life, those being torn apart would find it easy to tear others apart.
