'Looking good and sounding fine

First conceived by Warhurst et al.

(2000)

refers to employees bodies being

organizationally produced or made
up to embody the desired aesthetic
of the organization and intended to
provide for organizational benefit.

Embodied capacities and attributes

are, to some extent, possessed by
workers at the point of entry into
employment. ... And then....
 Employers then...

mobilize, develop, and

commodify these embodied
dispositions through processes
of recruitment, selection, training
and management, transforming
them into skills which are
geared towards producing a
style of service encounter that
appeals to the senses of the
customer
(Nickson et al. 2001).
 Employee appearance is an
integral feature of this
economy
Bolton (2000), suggests that...
If emotions have been discovered to
be here, there and everywhere in the
workplace the same might now be
said for aesthetics
(see Felstead et al. 2005: p.7896).

Postrell (2003 p.127) argues that

we are at a tipping point into an aesthetic economy, heralding
the age of look and feel. ...
When style is strategy, how employees look can be as much a
part of the atmosphere [of companies] as the grain of the
furniture or the beat of the background music
 Long an important consideration for employers....

C16th...
Society of Jesus selected priests with a pleasing manner of
speech and verbal facility, and also good appearance in the
absence of any notable ugliness, disfigurement or deformity
(Hopfl 2000, p.2034).

C19th...
Model Banker - senior banker described as being handsome
with hazel eyes, aquiline nose, iron-grey hair, firm
moustache, oval chin [and] cheeks slightly tinged with red
(McKinley 2002: p. 607).

C20th...
white-collar female department store worker - focuses on the
customer attracting the customer with modulated voice,
artful attire and stance
(Wright Mills 1951: p.175).
 Aesthetic labour is a key feature
of employees wage effort
bargaining.
Like emotional labour different
looks can be required of
employees throughout their
aesthetic labouring by different
organisations who are targeting
different market segments
(Hochschild 1983, Pettinger 2004
Warhurst and Nickson, 2007).

Its not just good looking

employees but also employees
with the right look...
 2004 survey of UK retail employers revealed:
90 per cent rated employee appearance as critical or important in
recruitment and selection.

61 per cent offered training in dress sense and style,

56 per cent provided other appearance training including in

employee body language

34 per cent provide training in personal grooming.

Other UK US- Australian survey reveal:

retail and hospitality employers want customer facing employees
with the right attitude and good appearance, both of which
employers perceive of as skills to be employed and then deployed.

(in Nickson et al. (2005),

 Grugulis et al. (2004)

"there is an increasing tendency for organisations

to manage the way their employees feel and look as
well as the way they behave, so that work is
emotional and aesthetic as well as (or instead of)
productive

(Hochschild, 1983; Macdonald and Sirianni, 1996; Warhurst

and Nickson, 2001).
 in the emotional labour literature
embodiment is continually debated:

i.e. Hochschilds (1983: 7) core definition of

emotional labour as: the management of feeling to
create a publicly observable facial and bodily
display.

Aesthetic labour showcase embodiment, revealing

how employee appearance, not just feelings, are
organizationally appropriated, transmuted and
controlled for commercial benefit.
 In customer-facing occupations employers
stressing the importance of prospective
employees' personal characteristics
Some now specify personal characteristics in lists of
skills they require

Thompson et al., 2001

This development is particularly true of interactive
services, such as retailing, where recruitment and
training both focus on the emotions and aesthetics of
the labour force deployed to deliver the service
 Nickson et al., 2001 p.7

In the style labour market of fashionable hotels

and bars the appearance, deportment, accents and
general stylishness of the bartender, waitress or
retail assistant are part of what makes the service
being offered trendy and upmarket
 (Warhurst and Nickson, 2001, p.14).

XYZ company are

... looking for people who are "passionate, stylish,
confident, tasty, clever, successful and well-travelled

????
 The personnel manager of a hotel was
implementing changes in working practices
aimed at the reception staff, but complained:
'they just won't smile.'

There are issues here around the extent to which

attributes are seen as separate from the person
and as skills to be developed.
 Nickson et al., 2001
Staff have to look good and sound right and
Recruitment and selection processes must try to
ensure that they do

 But it is not only in this front of house environment

that grooming, dress sense, deportment, manner,
tone and accent of voice and shape and size of body
become vital...
Nickson et al., 2001 p8.

Workplaces as diverse as
call centres,
training consultants,
investment banks
accountants
all recruit, train and promote staff on their emotional
and aesthetic skills
(McDowell, 1997; Trethewey, 1999; Anderson-Gough et al., 2000;
Thompson et al., 2001).
 If an employer is essentially looking for
someone who will project the right image....

How many people does this rule out,

irrespective of the skills they possess???
 Many of these characteristics, are open to
development and improvement through
instruction.

Their possession is a new facet of what it can

mean to be skilled"
Warhurst and Nickson (2001)
Grugulis et al., (2004, p.7)
 Language
Clothing
Body posture,
Length of their skirts
Hairstyles,
Weight
Size of bust, hips, thighs...
Makeup
Perfume
Way that they shave (both faces and legs),
Jewellery
Shoes
Colour of their hair etc....

(Hochschild, 1983; Paules, 1991; Warhurst and Nickson, 2001; Nickson et al., 2001;
Thompson et al., 2001).

This list is not exclusive, nor is it uncontested but...

 Employees
can and do resist,
misbehave
ignore these instructions,
Or...
enthuse,
co-operate
comply with them

(Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999; Paules, 1991).

 In emotional and aesthetic labour, employees
feelings and appearance are turned into
commodities and re-shaped to fit their
employers notions of what is desirable
(Putnam and Mumby, 1993; Thompson and McHugh,
2002).

Such detailed demands suggest that it is not only

the changing definition of skill that is problematic
but the site of its control... ?
 Grugulis et al., 2004, pp7-8) ...

1. Be enjoyed by employees and may equip them

with skills that advantage them both in and out of
the workplace
(Leidner, 1993; Nickson et al., 2001).
2. Lead to exhaustion, burnout
(Hochschild, 1983; Kunda, 1992),
3. Cause an inability to accept or engage with
emotions in the private sphere
(Casey, 1995)
4. Cause high levels of turnover
(Leidner, 1993; Korczynski, 2001)"
 "at rock bottom, the real personal and transferable skills
required for preferential employment are those of
whiteness, maleness and traditional middle-class"
(Ainley 1994, p. 80), and ...

the particular skills in personal presentation, self-

confidence, grooming, deportment and accent that
Glaswegian service sector employers are seeking are
liable to be linked to the parental social class, and family
and educational background of the job applicants"
(Nickson et al. (2003 p. 10).
 Ackroyd, S. and Thompson, P. (1999) Organizational Misbehaviour,
London: Sage.
Ainley, P. (1994). Degrees of Difference, London: Lawrence and
Wishart.
Anderson-Gough, F., Grey, C. and Robson, K. (2000) In the name of
the client: the service ethic in two professional service firms Human
Relations 53 (9) pp. 1151 1174.
Casey, C. (1995) Work, Self and Society: After Industrialism,
Routledge: London and New York.
Grugulis, I., Warhurst, C. and Keep, E. (2004) Whats happening to
skill? In Warhurst, C., Grugulis, I., and Keep, E. The skills that matter,
Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Hochschild, A.R. (1983) The Managed Heart, University of California
Press: Berkeley.
Korczynski, M. (2001) The contradictions of service work: call
centre as customer-oriented bureaucracy in Sturdy, A., Grugulis, I.
and Willmott, H. (eds.) Customer Service: empowerment and
entrapment Basingstoke:Palgrave.
 Kunda, G. (1992) Engineering Culture: control and commitment in a
High-Tech corporation, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Leidner, R. (1993) Fast Food, Fast Talk: service work and the
routinization of everyday life Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Macdonald, C.L. (1996) Shadow mothers: nannies, au pairs, and
invisible work in Macdonald, C.L. and Sirianni, C. (eds.) Working in the
Service Society Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Macdonald, C.L. and Sirianni, C. (1996) (eds.) Working in the Service
Society Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
McDowell, L. (1997) Capital Culture: gender at work in the City, Oxford:
Blackwells.
Nickson, D., Warhurst, C., Witz, A. and Cullen, A-M. (2001) The
importance of being aesthetic: work, employment and service
organisation in Sturdy, A., Grugulis, I. and Willmott, H. (eds.) Customer
Service: empowerment and entrapment Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Nickson, D., Warhurst, C., Witz, A., Cullen, A-M. and Watt, A. (2003)
Bringing in the excluded? Aesthetic labour, skills and training in the new
economy, Journal of Education and Work, Vol 16, No 2, 185-203.
 Paules, G.F. (1991) Dishing it Out: power and resistance among
waitresses in a New Jersey restaurant, Philadelphia: Temple University
Press.
Putnam, L. and Mumby, D.K. (1993) Organisations, emotions and the
myth of rationality in Fineman, S. (ed.) Emotion in Organisations
London: Sage.
Thompson, P. and McHugh, D. (2002) Work Organisations: a critical
introduction 3rd edition Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Thompson, P., Warhurst, C. and Callaghan, G. (2001) Ignorant Theory
and Knowledgeable Workers: Interrogating the connections between
knowledge, skills and services Journal of Management Studies 38 (7) pp.
923 942.
Trethewey, A. (1999) Disciplined bodies: womens embodied identities
at work Organization Studies 20 (3) pp. 423 450.
Warhurst, C., Nickson, D., Witz, A. and Cullen, A. (2000) Aesthetic
Labour in
Interactive Service Work: Some Case Study Evidence from the New
Glasgow, Service Industries Journal, 20:3, 118.
Warhurst, C. and Nickson, D. (2001) Looking Good, Sounding Right,
London: Industrial Society.