‘You’re trying to juggle everything’: Understanding the consequences of emotional labour for senior probation officers in England and Wales.

Much academic research has explored what it means to be a practitioner in the criminal justice system and a small body of research explores the roles and experiences of leaders. However, very little research has sought to understand the critical role of line managers in supporting frontline practitioners and activating the policy goals of an organisation situated – as they are – in the middle of an institution's chain of command. Good line management can improve worker well-being, organisational commitment and job satisfaction. In doing so, line managers perform high levels of emotional labour which – in turn – creates potentially adverse impacts on their own well-being. This article explores how line managers in probation – Senior Probation Officers – experience and cope with the consequences of having to perform emotional labour. We present the analysis of qualitative data gathered with 26 Senior Probation Officer (SPOs) and 2 senior managers across England and Wales exploring the effects of performing emotional labour and toxin handling. We also identify how they cope with these consequences through formal and informal sources of support such as ‘communities of coping’. We conclude by considering what our findings say about the interplay between individual and organisational factors and how the ways in which probation managers are asked by the organisation to use their emotions is detrimental to the well-being of SPOs and the organisation more broadly. We offer ways the Probation Service can refocus organisational priorities and goals to ameliorate the emotional toll felt by SPOs and benefit the organisation as a whole.