Unique aspects of stress in human service work

Abstract

Two unique stressors associated with human service work are emotional dissonance, particularly the need to hide negative emotions (emotion work), and client/customer-related social stressors. The latter may involve disproportionate or ambiguous client/customer expectations and/or verbally aggressive customers. These stressors affect all human service workers, even though they may vary in the extent to which their work involves lasting relationships with clients/customers, and in the amount of training they have received to deal with client/customer-related social stressors. For example, health professionals typically develop long-lasting relationships with their clients whereas call centre workers may have only a single brief interaction. In accordance with contemporary theories of work stress (conservation of resources, effort-reward imbalance, demand-control-support), we argue that social support and training designed to develop "role separation" are crucial resources needed to help human service workers cope with the unique stressors of their jobs.