Bu çalışmanın temel amacı, müşterilere daha iyi bir hizmet vermek için kurulan çağrı merkezlerinde çalışanların gösterdikleri duygusal emek davranışları ile performansları arasındaki ilişkiyi incelemektir. Duygusal emeğin farklı değişkenlerle ilişkisi incelenmiş iken işgören performansı değişkeni ile ilişkisi fazla incelenmemiştir. Bu bağlamda bu çalışmanın literatüre katkı yapması amaçlanmıştır. Öncelikli olarak; duygusal emek davranışları ile işgören performansı teorik olarak incelenmiştir. Daha sonra, 182 Merkezi Hekim Randevu Sistemi (MHRS) Erzurum ili Çağrı Merkezi’nde çalışan 318 kişiye anket yapılmış ve yapılan bu çalışma sonunda duygusal emeğin alt boyutlarından samimi davranış gösterme diğer boyutlara göre işgören performansını en fazla etkilemiştir.
Emotional labor can be defined as directing employees, emotions and behavior to present the appropriate emotion based on workplace rules or professional principles. Employee performance can also be defined as a measurement to represent both the determinant of employees’ current knowledge and skills and how they adopt organizational purposes and goals. In that sense, both concepts are considered to play an important role to attain certain goals set by organizations. In this study, the existing literature that addresses the relationship between emotional labor behaviors and employee performances was initially reviewed. In the light of the literature review, research model was developed and frequency, reliability, correlation and regression analyses were performed. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between emotional labor behavior of call center employees and their performance as call centers are principally constituted to perform better customer service. The number of previous research that concentrates on the relationship between emotional labor and employee performance is rather limited although the relationship between emotional labor and other different variables was successfully examined previously. In that sense, the present paper aims to fill this void in the existing literature. Firstly, the concepts of emotional labor behavior and employee performance were theoretically examined. Later, a questionnaire was administered to 318 call center employees of 182 Central Physician Appointment System (MHRS) in Erzurum province and the results of this paper reveal that sincere behavior display was found to have a higher impact on employee performance than other sub-dimensions of emotional labor. The present research can be supported by qualitative research in terms of conveying case studies by respondents. This paper may provide theoretical and methodological contribution to the existing emotional labor and employee performance literature.