Emotional Labour

What happens when, despite providing professional and respectful customer service, you are yelled at, threatened, or challenged? When the encounter is done, how do you manage your raw emotions from the event? What supports exist to help you work through these feelings, and start to love your job (and the customers) again? This session will present the findings from a Canadian study that investigated emotional labour in public libraries. Emotional labour is the idea that, working in public service, there is a need to control your emotions in order to accomplish your job. This research illustrated the ways in which public library workers have to respond to intense customer service situations. You will hear stories from the frontlines of customer service and learn about some of the strategies public library workers use to deal with the effects of emotionally charged customer encounters.

Beyond addressing basic literacy skills, many libraries are teaching financial, digital, and physical literacy, as well as offering medical, legal, and mental health services, in an effort to meet the needs of the whole person, during the entire lifespan. Barring a few exceptions, most services are free. This is a daunting, complex undertaking. Some argue we should "stay in our lane" and others are cursing the "vocational awe" that leads us to try to be all things to all people. We are burning out in rapid numbers. Meanwhile, as mounting fears and realities around climate change, pandemics, economic recession, and political corruption overwhelm our citizens they are increasingly turning to their libraries for information, shelter, and support. This talk will address those concerns and show how we can lead with compassion. It will argue that the proven solution to keeping librarians sane and service needs met during these turbulent times is by first taking care of ourselves, and then forming partnerships between outside non-profit organizations, government, local businesses, and citizens. More importantly, we will discuss positive steps we can take towards healing, while also acknowledging the grief, trauma, and guilt librarians experience every day on the front lines.

In the fall of 2018, Kyla conducted a pilot study at the University of Alberta School of Library and Information Studies to learn more about how emotional labour manifests in public library workers’ interactions with difficult patrons. This session will begin with a brief history of the research on emotional labour, and then go over the pilot study and its findings. Through the stories of the anonymous public library workers we can better understand the emotional labour demands of public library work. Ultimately, emotional labour will never disappear from library work, but together we can find a way to recognize its existence and value.
Learning Objectives:

• Understand what emotional labour is.
• Discover how emotional labour manifests in frontline public library workers’ interactions with difficult patrons.
• Learn how organizational issues play a role in emotional labour.