When the going gets tough, resilient employees keep going! : emotional labor and occupational commitment in a property and casualty insurance claims team

Abstract

As the saying popularized by American football coach Knute Rockne goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” The real question becomes what is the force that keeps the tough going while others quit? To answer that question, this paper evaluates the role of individual resilience within an employment context. Taking the position of resilience as a personal resource that employees possess in varying degrees, Hobfoll’s (1989) conservation of resources (COR) theory suggests that employees sensing a threat to their resource of resilience may not keep going after all but may alter their situation to protect their resources. Yet others seem to use their experiences to grow their store of resilience; a corollary to the COR theory suggests that these individuals may have more resources to invest in the first place (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017; Hobfoll, 1989). This is the question addressed by this study of employees in the claims division of a property and casualty insurance company. Employees in the claims division routinely deal with people who have emotions ranging from shock to distress, despair, and even anger. Quantitative methods were used to assess levels of personal resilience to both in-role emotional labor efforts and commitment to staying in that occupation.