Helping Yourself to Help Others: How Cognitive Change Strategies Improve Employee Reconciliation with Service Clients and Positive Work Outcomes

This qualitative study examined the paradox of difficult, yet meaningful, helping as part of employees' jobs in a social services organization. Incorporating an emergent design using employee interviews the study identified how employees alter their understanding of workplace challenges, such a...

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Veröffentlicht in:Journal of change management 2017-07, Vol.17 (3), p.249-267
Hauptverfasser: Flinchbaugh, Carol, Schwoerer, Catherine, May, Douglas R.
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:This qualitative study examined the paradox of difficult, yet meaningful, helping as part of employees' jobs in a social services organization. Incorporating an emergent design using employee interviews the study identified how employees alter their understanding of workplace challenges, such as emotional distress and unsafe client behaviours, in order to find new meaning in the other-oriented value of their work. The resulting framework of employees' experiences through challenging, yet meaningful, helping extends the research in customer service by proposing the reconciliation process, achieved through cognitive change strategies (i.e. visualization techniques, cognitive reframing and mindfulness of experience) serves as a conceptual bridge that helps the management of this apparent paradox. We first describe the workplace challenges and then outline the distinct cognitive change strategies that engendered the reconciliation process. Implications for practice and future researchers are then discussed.
ISSN:1469-7017
1479-1811
DOI:10.1080/14697017.2016.1231700