The personification of the service labour process and the rise of soft skills: a French case study
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425451311279429 |
| Published date | 09 November 2012 |
| Date | 09 November 2012 |
| Pages | 79-97 |
| Author | Franck Bailly,Alexandre Léné |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
The personification of the service
labour process and the rise of soft
skills: a French case study
Franck Bailly
Faculty of Law, Economics and Management, Universite
´de Rouen,
Rouen, France, and
Alexandre Le
´ne
´
Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Universite
´de Lille 1, Lille, France
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the consequences of the increasing prominence of
soft skills, focusing specifically on the production of these skills and their recognition and recruitment.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on interviews conducted with managers in the
service sector in France. Twotyp es of services arecovered: large-scale retailing and hotel and catering
services.
Findings – The paper shows that the demand for soft skills has caused the service labour process to
become highly personified and underline the risks this entails.
Practical implications – The personification of the service labour process encourages the
development of specific human resource management practices in the spheres of recruitment, pay and
training.
Social implications – The results underline the need for institutional mediation in the regulation
of the labour market. The personification of skills has many social implications in terms of
discrimination and policies on training and skill recognition.
Originality/value – The originality of the paper lies, first, in the fact that the results relate to France,
whereas most of the literature on soft skills has focused on the UK, the US and other English-speaking
countries. Furthermore, the article emphasises that managers’ practices are shaped by their attitudes
towards soft skills, and in particular whether they believe them to be acquired or innate.
Keywords Soft skills, Service labour process, Service workers, Skills, Service industries, France
Paper type Research p aper
Introduction
Over the past three decades, the developed eco nomies have undergone considerable
change. The development of new modes of work organisation and the emergence of the
customer’s presence have led to increased demand from employers for so-called soft
skills. These include social and interpersonal skills (being able to communicate),
emotional skills (empathy) and behavioural attitudes (a sense of service , involvement,
initiative-taking), as well as certain physical and psychological qualities (good
appearance, personality). Thus the range of characteristics described as skills has be en
widened. As a result, characteristics no t previously labelled as such, or at le ast not to
the same extent, are now classed as skills and have thus become factors in the world of
work and the workplace. The aim of this paper is to examine the implications of t his
trend for: the production of these skills, employee selection and skills recognition.
These developments particularly affect services, where the demand from employers
for soft skills is particularly high. It is hardly surprising, moreover, that the debates on
soft skills emerged in the UK, whose economy, well advanced as it is along the road to
deindustrialisation, has long been characterised by an increase in service jobs and
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Employee Relations
Vol.35 No. 1, 2013
pp. 79-97
rEmeraldGroup Publishing Limited
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DOI 10.1108/01425451311279429
79
Personification
of the service
labour process
a low-skill labour force. Since employment policy in recent years – at least in France –
has given priority to the service sector, particularly as a possible source of new jobs,
the rise of soft skills would seem to be a phenomenon that reflects economic and social
issues of crucial importance to this sector. It is this that justifies our interest in this
question in particular.
The first part of the paper is given over to a review of the literature, the aim of
which is to outline what we understand by soft skills. Thus we describe how the
meaning of the term “skill” has been extended to include characteristics increasingly
linked to the employee’s own person. We then seek to show how this extension is
changing the service labour process in the three areas listed above, with a particular
emphasis on the question of recognition, which is a hotly debated issue in France.
We will suggest that the rise to prominence of soft skills has been accompanied by the
increasing personification of the service labour process. We emphasise in particular
the structuring role played by empl oyers’ belief in the innateness or, conversely,
“acquirability” of such skills. To this end, we draw on the investigations we carried out
in France in the form of interviews with employers in retailing and the hotel and
catering industry. An outline of the essential elements of the French situations seems to
us of interest for two reasons. First, it underlines the fact that soft competences are an
issue in France as well, whereas most of the literature on the subject relates to the
English-speaking countries. To the best of our knowledge, there is no French study
dealing explicitly with soft skills. Second, the French situation is also interesting
because formal qualifications play a very important role in industrial relations. Thus
the increasing importance of soft skills calls into question to some extent the central
role that formal qualifications play in the evaluation of skills.
Soft skills: literature review
In recent years there have been numerous attempts to argue that traditional
conceptions of “skill” are outmoded and need to change in order to capture the
realities of work in a service economy. Several factors are said to be contributing to an
expanded notion of skill that goes beyond simply the “hard” technical abilities and
know-how associated with a manufacturing-based paradig m (Payne, 2009). More
and more employers require their employees to have not only technical competences,
which is not new, but also relational and involvement skills, as well as certain physical
characteristics. The review of the main studies on this topic that is the subject of this
section will enable us to clarify what we understand by soft competences.
A demand for relational skills
The first concern of the employers was that employees should have the technical skills
required to do their jobs. This technical knowledge constit utes the foundations of an
occupation and is acquired both in school and on the job. However, this technical
knowledge and know-how are not the only skills to be required. Employers are also
increasingly calling for skills that are described in the literatu re as “soft”. The term
denotes, first, relational skills. These include not only the ability to communicate but
also – and this is more novel – qualities that mobilise employees’ very personalities,
such as enthusiasm, the ability to interact socially or even empathetically with
customers. These skills seem to be essential for waiters and workers in fast-food
restaurants (Paules, 1996) and for supermarket workers (Ogbanna and Wilkinson,
1990), as well as for nurses (Bolton, 2001). The same applies to other activities such as
banks’ front-office services or call centres. Relational work involves understanding
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