Abstract
Workplace meetings often require individuals to display specific behaviours, making them a context in which employees engage in emotional labour. This is done to maintain professionalism and to meet the emotional expectations set by their organisation. However, this has an impact on their recovery at the end of a meeting and of a working day. This need for recovery is not identical for all employees. Previous research has shown that individuals’ differences play a major role in the emotional labour strategy an individual chooses to adopt, pertinent to this study are personality traits. However, few studies provide insight into the moderating role of personality and explain the psychological influence of meetings on meeting attendees. To address this gap, the overarching objective of this study was to examine the moderating effect of personality traits on the relationship between emotional labour and the need for recovery within the meeting context. The study made use of a quantitative cross-sectional design with a sample of 207 participants. SPSS was used to analyse the data, with the Hayes Process used for moderation analysis. The study’s findings revealed that emotional labour and the need for recovery were significantly related. Furthermore, of the personality traits, extraversion and openness moderated the surface acting and the need for recovery relationship. Future research is encouraged to obtain a larger sample while using a more inclusive sampling strategy.