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Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2003
Bringing intheExcluded? Aesthetic
labour, skillsandtraininginthe ‘new’
economy
DENNIS NICKSON,CHRIS WARHURST,ANNE MARIE CULLEN &
A
LLAN WATT [1]
The Scottish Hotel School, The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G4 0LG
ABSTRACT Debates about the nature of work, employment and skill formation in the
‘new’ economy have, to date, neglected the notion of ‘aesthetic labour’. Identification by us
of this ‘new’ form of labour provides the basis to review some of the implications in relation
to skill acquisition and usage, current training provision and social exclusion as it effects an
area of theeconomy that is predicted to have massive jobs growth. Thus, the article briefly
reports on a pilot ‘aesthetic skills’ training programme developed within the Glasgow milieu
to address some of these concerns. Despite some concerns about social control, we consider
the role of such dedicated trainingin improving the employability of the long-term
unemployed and conclude that provision of this type has a role in addressing social exclusion
in the labour market.
Introduction
In response, and sensitive, to the ‘skills deficit’ that is emerging as a result of the
structural shift intheeconomyand employment, this article will report on research
that has attempted to explore an under-developed and under-appreciated form of
labour in interactive service work (in this case retail, tourism/hospitality, and
financial services) inthe‘new’ Glasgow economy. This labour is termed by us
‘aesthetic labour’ and details of the initial empirical research that led to the
development of the concept can be found in Nickson et al. (2001). Furthermore, a
discussion of the conceptualisation of the relationship between aesthetic labour,
aesthetics and organisation is outlined in Witz et al. (2003). Essentially, though, we
see such labour as a supply of embodied capacities and attributes possessed by
workers at the point of entry into employment. Employers then mobilise, develop
and commodify these capacities and attributes through processes of recruitment,
selection and training, transforming them into ‘competences’ and ‘skills’ which are
then geared towards producing a ‘style’ of service encounter deliberately intended to
appeal to the senses of customers, most obviously in a visual or aural way. Although
analytically more complex, ‘looking good’ or ‘sounding right’ are the most overt
manifestations of aesthetic labour. In essence, with aestheticlabour, employers are
ISSN 1363-9080 print; 1469-9435 online/03/020185-19 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1363908032000070684
186 D. Nickson et al.
seeking employees who can portray the firm’s image through their work, and at the
same time appeal to the senses of the customer for those firms’ commercial benefit.
This article focuses on issues that arise from aesthetic labour; principally, skills,
training and social exclusion. A key consideration is the possibility that certain
potential employees will be excluded from these ‘style’ labour market jobs, and
indeed more general employment involving interactive service work. This exclusion
arises firstly because employers determine who is aesthetically acceptable during
recruitment and selection processes; because current training provision is not geared
to meeting employers’ skills demand with supply; and many of those excluded
appear to be self-selecting in not applying for such jobs.
This last point is important. According to the Scottish Executive (1999) creating
and sustaining employability is the responsibility of the state, individuals and
training providers. However, inthe UK there has been a shifting of responsibility to
individuals to ensure their employability, which means not just attaining and
maintaining employment but also progressing within it. To do so individuals are
being encouraged to develop an awareness of their own human capital—that is, their
skills, knowledge and so on—and the necessary training to generate that capital.
Whilst the state remains the largest source of funding for vocational training, the
latter is provided by intermediate training agencies. This approach is economistic,
with an assumption that individuals are able to ‘fit’ themselves into the market, by
meeting (employers’) demand with supply. Significantly, theskills that provide for
employability are not just technical but also ‘people’ skills. As the Scottish Executive
(1999, p. 37) states, ‘There is also a need to develop the personal skills and
attributes of the individual in a way which will make them attractive to potential
employers.’
The Scottish Executive notes that people skills are those relating to effective
interpersonal, communication and social skills. We argue that this definition is too
narrow and requires conceptual broadening to include ‘aesthetic skills’. In order to
address the development of this more broadly defined people skills, the research
team have been working collaboratively with the Wise Group—a social enterprise
with charitable status—whose objective is to help long-term unemployed people find
and keep jobs. From this collaboration a training programme has emerged that
sought to address the development of aestheticskillsin a group of long-term
unemployed people in Glasgow.
This article will firstly briefly discuss the reality of job creation and skill formation
in the so-called ‘new economy’. In particular, this section will suggest there is a need
for a more nuanced reading of the type of jobs created inthe new economy.
Specifically, the extent to which knowledge jobs are being created is often overstated
and does not recognise the reality of large numbers of routine interactive service
jobs. Following this analysis, the article will then consider some of the more
fundamental aspects of foregrounding aesthetics and style as an important part of
contemporary service workplaces. The subsequent section of the article considers
the skill needs that pertain to aesthetic labour. This discussion then includes a short
review of current training provision and social exclusion in relation to the labour
market. The review of the relationship between aestheticlabour,skillstraining and
Aesthetic Labour,SkillsandTraining 187
social exclusion provides the context to assess the response of one training provider,
the Wise Group, to this increasingly important ‘new’ skill. As part of this discussion
the article will also attempt to assess some of the more difficult questions to arise
from a training programmes of this type. Firstly, whether such training merely
equates to a form of social control; and secondly the desirability, not just feasibility,
of training for potentially low-waged, low-skilled jobs in areas such as retail and
hospitality.
Jobs, Skillsand ‘Body’ Work
Despite claims that we are all now Californian-style cyber workers, with high
incomes and high job satisfaction, there is as much continuity as change in contem-
porary work and employment (Warhurst & Thompson, 1998). It does need to be
recognised, however, that there have been some key developments in work and
employment. There have been some significant occupational changes, with a dis-
cernible shift from agriculture and manufacturing to services across the advanced
economies. This trend is set to continue. The National Skills Task Force (NSTF)
(1999) predicts that the numbers of professional and associated employees is set to
grow dramatically to 2009. However, it is an ‘hourglass economy’ that appears to be
emerging inthe UK (Nolan, 2001). This economy comprises an expansion of high
skill, high wage, high value added work at the top end of the labour market and the
expansion of low skill, low wage, low value added work at the bottom end. In this
respect, the largest jobs growth, increasing by over 30% over the same period, will
take place in personal and protective services (NSTF, 1999). Most actual and
forecast job growth, then, has occurred in more mundane services. It is these, what
might be termed, ‘McJobs’ involving low skill, low wages, little training, and which
are highly routinised and stringently monitored and not ‘iMacJobs’ requiring con-
siderable trainingand involving high skill, wages and autonomy that characterise
employment inthe so-called ‘new’economy [2].
Such trends have huge consequences for theskills demanded of employees by
employers. Certainly cyber workers will need ‘thinking skills’, identifying and solving
problems by manipulating symbols and ideas, but most new jobs will involve ‘person
to person’ skills, requiring good interpersonal interaction (Scottish Office, 1999).
Most usually, these person-to-person skills are framed in terms of emotion manage-
ment skills (see for example, Hochschild, 1983) but we would argue that increas-
ingly many service workers now require aestheticskills involving corporeal
management, and most particularly in what we have termed the style labour market
(Warhurst & Nickson, 2001). Reflecting on these developments, and providing a
comprehensive review of knowledge, skillsand competitiveness inthe UK, Keep and
Mayhew (1999) make the point that the meaning of the term ‘skill’ has expanded
considerably in recent years. They note, ‘Many employers … appear to be using the
term “skill” to embrace personal characteristics and psychological traits.’ It is at this
point that ‘skill’ becomes part of ‘competency’. The latter is usually regarded as
encompassing the skills, knowledge, behavioural characteristics and other attributes
that for employers provide for the prediction of superior work performance (Storey,
188 D. Nickson et al.
2001). Importantly, Keep and Mayhew (1999, p. 10) continue, ‘This broadening of
the spectrum and mix of knowledge, capabilities, traits and physical attributes that
can be grouped under the umbrella term of skills raises a number of major issues for
policy-makers.’
The implications of the shifting patterns of work, employment andthe skills
required of employees has engendered something of a dualism in terms of whether
these trends are to be applauded or decried. For example, Gorz (1982, p. 71)
describing the ‘post-industrial proletariat’ suggests that for them, ‘Work … does not
belong to the individuals who perform it, nor can it be termed their own activity. It
belongs to the machinery of social production, is allowed and programmed by it,
remaining external to the individuals upon whom it is imposed.’ Indeed, more
recently in his critique of contemporary work, Gorz (1999) rails against what such
work entails because, lacking materiality, there is nothing produced from it upon
which individuals can achieve self-realisation by inscribing themselves. More
specifically in considering the essence of service work, Gorz even suggests that the
‘professionalisation of “interpersonal skills” as a means of expanding employment
poisons our day to day culture’ (p. 71).
By contrast, Bell (1974) in his work on the so-called ‘post-industrial society’
regards these developments as less of a degradation of work and more simply a
positive reflection of a transformation of a society based upon fabrication to
intellectualism. Bell uses the game metaphor to describe a ‘game against nature’ in
the pre-industrial phase, a ‘game against fabricated nature’ inthe industrial era and
a ‘game between persons’ inthe post-industrial era. Clearly, in this game between
persons the utilisation of ‘interpersonal skills’ becomes a key component of work and
employment. Indeed, we would argue that increasingly, as a further development,
how we ‘present’ ourselves in this game is equally important.
Whilst useful in delineating the debate about the nature of work inthe post-
manufacturing era, neither Gorz nor Bell explicitly considers the embodied aspects
of service work. For Bell, with his emphasis on intellectualism, the focus becomes
scientific, technical and professional occupations andthe emergence of knowledge-
type workers. For Gorz, the focus in on the development and empowerment (to use
current terminology) of the working class for itself. He similarly suggested that a new
vanguard of highly qualified, mainly, again, technical and white-collar workers are
emerging concerned with the control of work. To consider the issue of embodiment
in work we need to consider the wider sociological literature, especially that which
indicates how individuals’ corporeality can be ‘made up’ (du Gay, 1996) through
organisational strategies and processes. To explore this possibility, it is necessary to
turn to the work of Bourdieu and Goffman.
Bourdieu (1984) articulates the body as ‘physical capital’ or embodied disposi-
tions to be ‘made up’. These dispositions refer to durable ways of standing,
speaking, walking and so of feeling and thinking. Elaborate techniques of body work,
with care and repair, are necessary to develop new bodily schemas of posture,
movements and subjective states. Unfortunately, Bourdieu’s analysis is wholly
concerned with body work for societal—mostly class—reproduction. We would
argue that it is also useful for understanding organisational reproduction. It is here
Aesthetic Labour,SkillsandTraining 189
that Goffman’s work has utility for interrogating the production and performance of
aesthetic labour, capturing its visual elements of ‘face-to-face, body-to-body, seen-
seer to seen-seer’ (Crossley, 1995, p. 145) and its aural element of voice-to-voice; in
short, alerting us to both the sentient and sensible aspects of aesthetic labour. This
reproduction can be best explained by reference to Goffman’s exposition of the
staged and scripted performance of the embodied self inthe workplace. This
dramatugical mode of analysis is most salient in Goffman’s (1959, p. 83) description
of service work:
one finds that service personnel, whether in profession, bureaucracy, busi-
ness, or craft, enliven their manner with movements which express
proficiency and integrity, but whatever this manner conveys about them,
often its major purpose is to establish a favourable definition of their service
or product.
Bourdieu then provides an understanding of body work and Goffman an apprecia-
tion of how this body work is performed inthe workplace, and which underpins our
conceptual understanding of theaesthetic labour that is an emerging feature of work
and employment in Glasgow and other post-manufacturing economies (for further
elaboration of this conceptualisation, see Witz et al., 2003).
The Importance of Aesthetic Labour and its Impact on Skills Demand
Within Glasgow’s employment shift from manufacturing to services, we have
identified an emerging style labour market, encompassing designer-type retail and
hospitality outlets, and which is attracting much media and practitioner attention
(see, for example, Frewin, 1999). These perceptions are encapsulated by the
labelling inthe popular press of Glasgow as ‘the style capital of Scotland, if not all
of Britain’ (Anon., 1999, p. 25).
A key issue to arise from this development is a misunderstanding of the type of
skills that are currently being sought inthe service economyand which can lead to
potential employees being excluded. Acknowledgement of the existence of the need
for aestheticskillsand competencies inthe style labour market is not to suggest that
organisations have embarked upon a new wave management strategy that is appli-
cable to all service organisations. Equally, though, there is some evidence from our
research that theaestheticskillsand competencies being sought by employers in the
style labour market are now occurring less systematically in other high street
retailers, banks and hospitality outlets.
That said, we do also recognise that the notion of self-presentation and aesthetics
in the workplace is by no means a new phenomenon. For example, within much of
the popular business literature great play is made of way in which individual
employees can manage their image by engaging in ‘impression management’ or
‘non-verbal influencing’ in order to socially negotiate their interactions with other
organisational members. Thus, we aim to ‘package’ and ‘sell’ ourselves in a way that
enhances our career prospects. Moreover, in relation to personal aesthetics, Hopfl
(2000, p. 197) has argued that ‘the cultivation of appearances, even a certain
190 D. Nickson et al.
theatricality—as a key constituent of organisational success—is not a recent inven-
tion’. She notes how candidates for the Society of Jesus—the Jesuits—as long ago as
the 16th century had to have ‘a pleasing manner of speech and verbal facility and
also good appearance inthe absence of any notable ugliness, disfigurement or
deformity’ (2000, p. 204). In a similar vein there are allusions to the importance of
presentation and a recognition of ‘body work’ in organisations inthe work of a
number of authors (see for example, Adkins, 2000; Hancock & Tyler, 2000), all of
whom focus on service work. However, the conceptualisation of labour in all these
works is primarily induced by an interest in sexuality and gender, and less with a
process of commodification.
Moreover, we would argue that employer demand for aestheticskillsand compe-
tences is becoming more prevalent because of its perceived commercial utility as the
service sector expands. Inthe 1980s retailers were concerned with seeking differen-
tiation via image, based on ‘design interiors’. This concern with the service organis-
ation’s image projection has now enveloped the organisation’s employees, Lowe and
Crewe (1996) note. Constantly ‘on display’, these employees are increasingly
regarded by employers as part of the service product.
It is no surprise therefore that a recent survey of company dress codes undertaken
by Industrial Relations Services (2000) highlights the importance companies now
place on their employees’ appearance when dealing with customers. Relatedly, it is
important to note that all organisations have an aesthetic appeal but the form of
aesthetic being offered may vary from one type of service organisation to another.
The aesthetic of a style restaurant in Groucho St Jude’s boutique hotel in Glasgow
will be very different from that of Harry Ramsden’s fish and chip restaurant in the
same city.
It is important to note that aestheticskills do not replace but complement social
and technical skills. Inthe style labour market, management need, and employees
use, a matrix of skills; technical, social and aesthetic. Previous research has empha-
sised the first, current research has brought greater attention to the second, but the
third—aesthetic—has been overlooked to date.
Our research indicates that employers in industries such as retail and hospitality
are not, inthe first instance, seeking potential employees with technical skills. This
findings affirm those of the Work Wise report (Farquhar, 1996) that technical skills
rank low with Glasgow employers as criteria for recruitment and selection, in fact
23rd out of 24—just above being a member of a youth organisation! Technical skills
tend to be developed once employees are inside the organisation, and then usually
derived from ‘on the job’ trainingin routine interactive service work. Given this
situation we need to consider some of the potential policy ramifications, to which
attention now turns. The Work Wise survey of employers covered a range of sectors.
Disaggregated for retail alone in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, a desire by employ-
ers for technical skills again does not appear inthe top ten criteria. Instead, in this
industry, as inthe style labour market more specifically, employers seek person-to-
person skills. Clearly, employers do want social skills, such as communication and
team working. They also rely upon the physical appearance, or the modulated voice
and understated accent or more specifically, the embodied capacities and attributes
of those to be employed.
Aesthetic Labour,SkillsandTraining 191
Three Policy Issues: skills, trainingand social exclusion
The Skills that Matter
Policy-makers and academics are engaged in a keen debate about the importance of
skills for enhancing individual employability, firm productivity and national compet-
itiveness. There is now clear evidence that aestheticskills have become an important
element of theskills that matter. Aesthetics skills are clearly the key skills demanded
by designer retailers, boutique hotels and style bars, cafe´s and restaurants, not just
in Glasgow but across the UK, in cities such as Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester.
In a national survey of skills needs in hotels, restaurants and pubs and bars
undertaken by the Hospitality Training Foundation (HtF), the national training
organisation for the industry, 85% of employers stated their employees’ personal
presentation and appearance to be very important. Personal presentation and
appearance was ranked 3rd both now andinthe future, making it more important
than even employees’ ability to follow instructions, demonstrate initiative or have
communication skills (HtF, 2000).
Policymakers are beginning to realise that people or person-to-person skills are as
important to employers as thinking skills. We would argue that these person-to-per-
son skills need to be better conceived. Affecting a desired service encounter requires
the use of both social andaestheticskillsinthe style labour market. Employability
here relies upon employees’ skill in also managing their appearance, corporeality and
voice. Along with social, aestheticskills then form those person-to-person skills, as
Table I indicates.
Undoubtedly, California-style cyber workers are at the cutting edge of the new
economy; however, as we have noted, their numbers are limited now and are
predicted to remain so. There will be cyber workers who enjoy their time musing in
and able to afford high price lattes and cappuccinos at the style bars, cafe´s and
restaurants. And they will want these places, its hardware (that is the physical
environment) and software (that is the people serving them), to be pleasing to them.
What is required is a more balanced approach to skills supply and demand. A
plethora of discussion articles and reports now offer differing terminology for the
range of skills which employers need. The lexicon has grown large: ‘vocational
skills’, ‘cognitive skills’, ‘manual skills’, ‘core skills’, ‘generic skills’ and ‘technical
Table I. Redefining person-to-person skills
Person-to-person skills
Social Aesthetic
key elements key elements
management of feelings management of appearance
emotion management corporeal management
examples examples
empathy looking good
communication sounding right
192 D. Nickson et al.
skills’ are but some. As we noted earlier the umbrella of ‘skill’ has broadened
considerably in recent years. That many of these skills are not easy to accredit with
formal qualifications can prove problematic both for training providers and the
funders of that training. Giving a set of activities a National Vocational Qualification
(NVQ) is not the answer, though it is a preference of many in Government. Too
often skill is conflated with qualification, or the latter used as a proxy measure of the
former. Instead, there is a need to focus on theskills used at work. We would suggest
that there are a range of skills that now matter given that the definition of skill has
broadened reflecting economic shifts.
Government training policy needs to be balanced and coordinated to address this
range of skills. Funding bodies should encourage training bodies not to compete in
cherry-picking areas of training for new economy jobs, as currently defined by
policy-makers, but ensure that supply meets demand by ascertaining and responding
to the needs of all employers; in both the so-called new and old economies.
Unfortunately, current vocational training policy for the whole economy tends to
be driven by a traditional approach—the technical skill model, transmuted recently
into information technology (IT) skills [3]. Taking a wider view of theeconomy and
the changes in it suggests a very different prescription.
Training for Industry
Discussions about personal aesthetics have long focused on middle-class occupa-
tions such as management, professionals and ‘City types’. There are still endless
discussions inthe business press about the cut and colour of suits andthe whole
‘grooming for success’ theme of management training (Spillane, 2000). But what is
accepted at the top end of the labour market is also now becoming more important
at the lower end. And fortunately, the importance of aestheticskillsand its current
omission is beginning to permeate debate about the supply-side of vocational
training inthe UK. In their overview of the current training provision inthe UK,
Keep and Mayhew (1999) suggest that the style labour market represents a so far
unappreciated ‘flipside’ to the knowledge economyin terms of training provision.
The importance of personal aesthetics for not only ‘getting into’ but also ‘doing’ a
job is recognised by Keep and Mayhew (1999, p. 11) who argue that ‘vocational
education andtraining providers would appear to need to be thinking about speech
training, deportment, and personal grooming classes rather than degrees, GCSEs or
NVQs’.
The announcement in January 2000 by Tessa Jowell, then UK Minister respon-
sible for the New Deal, that all New Dealers would be offered personal presentation
courses as part of a ten-point plan to improve this Government initiative is a tacit
admission of the importance of the need for aesthetic skills. Research has shown that
bespoke training programmes for the long-term unemployed significantly enhances
individuals’ employability. Targeting New Deal training programmes in areas of
high unemployment is regarded as a priority (Finn, 2001). The emergent style
labour market might compound this high unemployment. To appreciate this point
Aesthetic Labour,SkillsandTraining 193
Table II. Unacceptable discrimination?
Three young women were dismissed from their motorway services employment
because their manager told them that they were not the sort of people that the
company wanted to employ. One wore glasses, one was too quiet andthe other black.
A supermarket check-out girl was sent home by her manager to shave her legs
because doing otherwise would ‘put customers off’.
A 21-year-old man was rejected for a part-time job in a bar because he had a ponytail
which, the manager felt, ‘might put off the customers’.
A sales assistant was dismissed for becoming ‘too fat and ugly’ whilst she was
pregnant.
One designer boutique said that they would never employ anyone over a dress size 16 because
it did not project the right image.
A 29-year-old manager stated that she would soon have to leave her work in a trendy
city centre bar after her next birthday because of her age.
Railway guards were told to roll down their sleeves to hide tattoos from customers or
face the sack. A top union official accused the company of undermining safety by
hiring guards based on their looks and ability to sell to passengers, rather than on
operational and safety knowledge.
These examples are drawn from our own research and:
A
NON. (2000) Barman wins in brush with sex bias laws Metro,13January, p. 12.
L
AMB,J.(1999) Face value gains credence in ‘unwritten’ HR policies, People
Management,25November, pp. 14–15.
R
ODRICK,V.(1997) Guards turn ugly in safety dispute, Evening Times,1August,
p. 1.
the article will now briefly consider the extent to which the emergence of aesthetic
labour may lead to social exclusion.
‘Too Posh For Me’: social exclusion andthe style labour market
Designer-type retail and hospitality outlets are part of product segmentation. Our
research and other examples, however, point to the discrimination that can occur in
the recruitment and selection of employees for the style labour market, as well as
more prosaic customer facing jobs (and see Table II).
These examples appear as anomalous but discrimination is more widespread, even
structural. Used widely by EU policy-makers, the term ‘social exclusion’ is relatively
new to political and academic debate inthe UK but it is attracting much attention
(see for example, Atkinson & Hills, 1998). Social exclusion has become a compre-
hensive term, encompassing employment, income, welfare, social experience and
democratic participation. Inthe UK, use of the term reflects interest patterns or
distortions to a social system, for example, discrimination. It is also used to highlight
194 D. Nickson et al.
the dynamic processes through which people are disadvantaged, including employ-
ment opportunities. Changes inthe labour market are one development that has led
to inequalities of income and so contributes to the process of social exclusion. It is
suggested that the development of policies that offer employment opportunities for
the long-term unemployed, older and younger workers should be a focus of atten-
tion. The causes of social exclusion are structural, not random. Factors such as
unemployment and discrimination serve to create and sustain it. Tackling exclusion
arising from economic ‘distortions’ is a key issue for policy-makers because of its
direct (welfare payments for example) and indirect (crime, health and so on) costs
as well as its negative effects on the country’s competitiveness by restricting available
and apposite labour.
In the context of an emergent style labour market there are a number of key issues
in relation to this exclusion; discrimination by employers, self-exclusion by the
unemployed andthe mismatch between training supply and need. The first issue
involves acknowledging who is being employed. Evidence would suggest that
designer retailers, boutique hotels and style bars, cafe´s and restaurants, are drawing
upon particular segments of the labour market. Most notably these organisations
tend to seek younger people from middle-class suburban areas, especially students,
who could often be thought of as having what Bourdieu (1984) has termed the
‘cultural capital’ required to work in these organisations. Clearly, there is a related
point here in terms of access to further and higher education. Students who have
access to higher education, in particular, may well undergo a process of socialisation
that allows them to further refine and develop the cultural capital which may be
inherent anyway from their largely middle-class backgrounds (Langlois & Lucas,
2002).
In Glasgow, commuters from the middle-class suburbs now fill 50% of jobs.
Resultantly, younger people from those areas of Glasgow with the highest unem-
ployment, the working-class inner-city areas, who might have been expected to be
absorbed into the service sector as manufacturing declined inthe city, are seemingly
being excluded. The consequence is a high percentage of inner-city long-term
unemployment. This suggests that a key issue is the mismatch between theskills that
the unemployed can offer and their relevance or otherwise for the type of jobs likely
to be available. Drawing again on the Glasgow example, 20,000 people are unem-
ployed inthe city but there exists 5500 unfilled job vacancies, the vast majority of
which are in retail and hospitality (Holland, 2000). Our contention would be that a
proportion of these jobs are likely to remain unfilled unless long-term unemployed
people are equipped with aesthetic skills.
In addition to the recruitment and selection strategies of companies, a second
issue is that those being excluded appear also to be self-selecting. The Glasgow
University-based Trainingand Employment Research Unit (TERU) (1999) reports
the results of a number of focus groups held with unemployed people, and which
sought to ascertain the perception of the unemployed in Glasgow towards growth
sector jobs—that is, jobs in hospitality, retail and call centres. The report suggests
that there may be something of an expectations gap between employer requirements
and the perception of these requirements by the unemployed. This is partially
[...]... qualifications and lifelong learning, UK manufacturing, it is hoped, will achieve the performance of foreign-owned manufacturing operations inthe UK The task for the Wise Group is to get the unemployed and those in receipt of AestheticLabour,SkillsandTraining 197 FIG 1 Employment and social exclusion in Scotland—added value and costs of exclusion incapacity benefit over the line and, realistically, into interactive... improve health and fitness; to widen perception of job opportunities in the new economy; and to obtain feedback and generate discussion of the course More specifically, theaesthetic labour training programme aimed to educate and inform clients of recruitment, selection andtraining criteria demanded by potential employers It offered education andtraininginthe skills needed to be successful inthe processes... 2000) The sample, which was representative of the long-term unemployed in both Glasgow andthe UK in terms of age, sex and length of unemployment, examined New Deal trainees Although most job growth inthe city is in hotels, restaurants and retail, the survey found little training being offered or undertaken for theskills required in these industries Instead, training occurred in work in which the number... is to enhance the employability of clients at the point of recruitment and selection—‘getting a job’—while also enhancing their capacity to sustain employment—‘doing the job’— in the style labour market The need for this kind of trainingand an indication of the current mismatch between training, skillsand employability can be seen in an unpublished survey of the long-term unemployed in Glasgow (Cerretti,... misunderstanding regarding skills demanded by employers; and self-exclusion by potential employees—by offering appropriate training and education inthe demands of the style labour market Upon completion of theaesthetic labour training programme these clients would be recruited by organisations seeking employees with a set of embodied capacities andskills that would appeal to the organisation and their... programme was a useful tool in creating employability The review of the course was based on material obtained from group and individual interviews with, and written feedback from, Wise Group trainees, all of whom had taken part in the initial two-week pilot Feedback was also obtained from the trainer involved inthe programme Field notes AestheticLabour,SkillsandTraining 199 produced from participant... Group trainees may go Hospitality, in particular, has a AestheticLabour,SkillsandTraining 201 long-standing reputation as a poor employing industry characterised by casualised, low-wage and low-skill work However, there is some emerging evidence that initiatives such as the National Minimum Wage andthe Working Time Directive have had some impact in improving the quality of employment in areas... jacket and that but not while at work I need to look right and my voice is important I think I have developed an awareness of these things in myself and that they are important in work The Wise Group pilot was intended to inform the development of an aesthetics training programme, delivered on a stand-alone or bespoke basis or as a component of generic services trainingThe purpose of such a training. .. some aestheticskills of their employees, different companies require different aesthetics One shoe, or vocational training programme, does not fit all Some companies will require basic aestheticskillstraining for their employees, others inthe style labour market will want that training to be highly developed as it forms a key, not just complementary, part of their product However, all training for... them throughout the duration of thetraining course In particular the course successfully addressed the need for confidence building inthe long-term unemployed An unexpected finding from the data, considering the lack of attention to aestheticskills formation, was the trainees’ awareness of the necessity to ‘perform a role’ and present a certain persona in interactive service work Trainees discussed . Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2003
Bringing in the Excluded? Aesthetic
labour, skills and training in the ‘new’
economy
DENNIS NICKSON,CHRIS. labour
market. The review of the relationship between aesthetic labour, skills training and
Aesthetic Labour, Skills and Training 187
social exclusion provides the