Bringing in the Excluded? Aesthetic labour, skills and training in the ‘new’ economy doc

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 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 the economy 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 training in 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 in the economy and 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) in the ‘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 aesthetic labour, 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, in the 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, the skills 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 aesthetic skills in 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 in the 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 aesthetic labour, skills training and
Aesthetic Labour, Skills and Training 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, Skills and ‘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 in the 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 training and involving high skill, wages and autonomy that characterise
employment in the so-called ‘new’ economy [2].
Such trends have huge consequences for the skills 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 aesthetic skills 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, skills and competitiveness in the 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 and the 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’ in the industrial era and

a ‘game between persons’ in the 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 in the 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 and the 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, Skills and Training 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 in the 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 in the workplace, and which underpins our
conceptual understanding of the aesthetic 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 in the 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 in the service economy and which can lead to
potential employees being excluded. Acknowledgement of the existence of the need
for aesthetic skills and competencies in the 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 the aesthetic skills and 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 in the 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 in the 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 aesthetic skills and compe-
tences is becoming more prevalent because of its perceived commercial utility as the
service sector expands. In the 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 aesthetic skills do not replace but complement social
and technical skills. In the 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, in the 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’ training in 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 in the top ten criteria. Instead, in this
industry, as in the 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, Skills and Training 191
Three Policy Issues: skills, training and 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 aesthetic skills have become an important
element of the skills 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 and in the 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 and aesthetic skills in the style labour market. Employability
here relies upon employees’ skill in also managing their appearance, corporeality and
voice. Along with social, aesthetic skills 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 the skills 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 the economy 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 in the business press about the cut and colour of suits and the 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 aesthetic skills and its current
omission is beginning to permeate debate about the supply-side of vocational
training in the UK. In their overview of the current training provision in the UK,
Keep and Mayhew (1999) suggest that the style labour market represents a so far
unappreciated ‘flipside’ to the knowledge economy in 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 and training 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, Skills and Training 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 and the 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 and the 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 in the 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. In the 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 in the 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 and the 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 in the 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 the skills 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 in the 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 Training and 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
Aesthetic Labour, Skills and Training 195
demonstrated in relation to a question asking both employers and the unemployed
to highlight the skill characteristics needed to work in the growth sector industries.
Amongst a range of other skills, in relation to ‘Dealing with clients/way present
yourself’, 100% of employers in call centres, retail and hospitality said this was an
important characteristic, whilst the unemployed were respectively 85%, 89% and
87%. In addition, ‘Some concerns were raised about employer prejudice towards the
unemployed and a fear that they would be unable to secure a call centre position if
they did not have a “posh accent”.’ As the report concludes ‘It would appear that
a sizeable proportion of the unemployed do not believe that they have the appropri-
ate skills and characteristics to secure employment in growth sector industries’
(TERU, 1999, p. 22).
A third issue is the current misunderstanding of the type of skills that are currently
demanded by employers and which can lead to potential employees being unable to

access the style labour market. Too many agencies involved in training provision
believe that technical skills alone, such as IT, are the key to creating employability.
However, these skills are inappropriate in terms of the skills that employers in the
style labour market are seeking. And although training is becoming individualised,
individuals often lack the capacity and resources to discern employment trends and
areas of job growth.
There is scope, therefore, and a need for a reassessment of what creates employ-
ability if those individuals who are currently excluded from the style labour market
are to be equipped to access it and maintain their employment within it. In the style
labour market, employers require a matrix of skills—technical, social and aesthetic.
The first is provided ‘in-house’, the middle and last filtered into companies through
recruitment and selection processes. It is the middle and last skills that are encom-
passed by the term person-to-person skills. However, it is only the social so far that
has been appreciated by academics and policy-makers. For employers, however, the
aesthetic skills that also comprise the person-to-person interaction can be of crucial
importance as criteria for entering employment. Moreover, such skills are essential
to the process of service (in other words, doing the work) and the product that
companies wish to offer (in other words, employees embodying the image of the
company). Thus, the over-emphasis on technical and social skills in advanced
economies’ work and employment omits recognition of a key development in the
contemporary workplace—a development that affects the employability of much of
the labour force.
One attempt to address these issues has been the piloting of an aesthetics skills
training course for the long-term unemployed in Glasgow.
The Wise Group Pilot Training Programme for the Style Labour Market
The Wise Group is what is now called a ‘social enterprise’. The Wise Group has
charitable status and operates across Scotland and in several cities in England. Its
objective is to help the long-term unemployed find and keep jobs and it collaborates
with public, private, voluntary and community partners. To this end, the Wise
Group converts good ideas into practical solutions, meeting the needs of not just the

196 D. Nickson et al.
unemployed but also employers and local communities. In 2002 it was listed in the
top 75 innovative organisations in the UK (Anon., 2002). Its ideas and initiatives
have informed UK and Scottish government labour market policy and programmes.
Since its formation the Wise Group has helped move its clients from welfare to
work, regenerated communities and helped the excluded find ways to integrate.
Over 12,000 people have been through the Wise Group’s programmes, of which
6000 have secured employment. Another measure of the Wise Group’s success is
that the UK Government has adopted many of its initiatives as national policy—the
most important being the Intermediate Labour Market (ILM). Essentially ILMs
have been developed as a means of tackling long-term unemployment and the ILM
operated by the Wise Group is the longest established and best known (Marshall &
Macfarlane, 2000). The exemplary nature of the Wise Group ILM is illustrated by
the fact that it has been absorbed into the New Deal.
One of the main tasks of the Wise Group is to reskill the unemployed to meet the
needs of the labour market. Essentially there are four types of unemployment. There
is frictional unemployment, involving workers who are in between jobs. These
people have the right skills and are briefly unemployed as they move from one job
to another either locally or in another area because, for example, they have moved
house. These people simply need to know what jobs are available and where in their
(new) area. Then there are the ‘tweakers’, those people who have been made
redundant recently or who have been out of work for up to one year. These people
are employable because they are job ready but might need retraining programmes to
develop the appropriate skills to take advantage of new job opportunities. Thirdly,
there are the long-term unemployed who have been out of work for more than one
year. The reasons for this long-term unemployment can vary. It might be because of
family care responsibilities. It might also be because of a lack of work discipline due
to drug or mental health problems. These people might need an intermediary labour
market, such as ‘work for benefit’ programmes for example, to familiarise them with
required working patterns. (It might also be that some of these people need care

rather than work and, supported by welfare, are the residually unemployed.) In the
past, the Wise Group focused on the tweakers. However, the UK now has fuller
employment and thus the client base of the Wise Group has altered. The majority
now comprises the long-term unemployed, many of whom are in receipt of incapac-
ity benefit rather than unemployment benefit.
Figure 1, representing the value added or otherwise per individual in different
forms of economic activity in Scotland, indicates a number of points. Firstly, most
value added is creating by employees working for foreign inward investors in
manufacturing, predominantly electronics related. Secondly, that interactive service
work, such as retailing, creates less value added. Thirdly, that unemployment, not
surprisingly given its negative cost, creates a financial drain. The same is even more
true of individuals on incapacity benefit. The arrows indicate the desired develop-
mental trajectories. So, for example, with appropriate vocational qualifications and
lifelong learning, UK manufacturing, it is hoped, will achieve the performance of
foreign-owned manufacturing operations in the UK.
The task for the Wise Group is to get the unemployed and those in receipt of
Aesthetic Labour, Skills and Training 197
FIG.1. Employment and social exclusion in Scotland—added value and costs of exclusion.
incapacity benefit over the line and, realistically, into interactive service work. That
task is less easy with the long-term unemployed and those in receipt of incapacity
benefit—who comprise the majority of the Wise Group’s current clientele. It has to
be emphasised that these clients have ‘multiple disadvantage’; they have little or no
experience of employment, no vocational qualifications and lack labour discipline.
For these clients, employability requires the attainment of life skills. For the
unemployed who are tweakers, exposure and appreciation of person-to-person skills
is required, such as an appreciation of the importance of aesthetics, along with basic
skills.
The outline for the aesthetic labour training programme was developed in a series
of meetings between members of the research team and representatives of the Wise
Group. A further aspect of the development process was the involvement of local

employers to ensure that the type of skills with which the unemployed are to be
equipped are indeed apposite for accessing growth sector jobs.
The pilot aesthetic labour training programme at the Wise Group ran for two
weeks. Participants were recruited, voluntarily, from existing trainees enrolled in a
variety of courses at the Wise Group. The general objectives of the programme were
to build confidence; to improve social skills; to improve motivation; to 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, the
aesthetic labour training programme aimed to educate and inform clients of recruit-
ment, selection and training criteria demanded by potential employers. It offered
education and training in the skills needed to be successful in the processes of
recruitment, selection and working in industries such as retail and hospitality. As
highlighted by the research on aesthetic labour (Nickson et al., 2001), employers
place emphasis on such qualities as personal presentation, personality and behav-
iour, physical appearance, personal grooming, voice, accent and communication,
and style or image. The course, therefore, addressed the development and presen-
tation of these skills.
Importantly the programme aimed to encourage the long-term unemployed to
198 D. Nickson et al.
seek and apply for jobs from which they might previously have excluded themselves
as they believed they did not posses the ‘right’ capacities and skills to meet job
advertisements requiring ‘stylish’, ‘well presented’, ‘outgoing’, ‘sexy’, ‘attractive’ or
‘trendy’ staff. What the training programme offered potential employees was
confidence and practical advice regarding the realities of this labour market both in
the short term (attaining employment) and long term (maintaining and progressing
in that employment).
Overall it was anticipated that clients on the pilot aesthetic labour training
programme would develop an awareness of and appreciation for aesthetic compe-
tences and skills. It was expected that clients would develop an appreciation of their
own qualities, qualities that are important in the job market, and thus would grow

in confidence, motivation, self-esteem and self-appreciation. In order to address
these issues the pilot programme covered topics such as:
• What is beautiful—which involved identifying people who ‘look and sound good’
and also determining why they do so.
• Making the most of yourself—consisting of education in personal grooming, dress
and personal presentation skills.
• Food, health and beauty—developing a healthy eating plan; a one-to-one session
with a personal trainer; maintaining a beauty routine; receiving a professional
makeover; and taking part in a photographic session.
• Recording a song—taking part in team work and attempting to build confidence.
Involved choosing a song, rehearsing as a group and recording at sound studio.
• Visit to a bar/restaurant to have lunch, receive tour of the establishment and have
opportunity to take part in a question-and-answers session with the manageress.
• Acting/role playing—clients examined techniques of acting and role playing. These
strategies are particularly salient in interactive service sector employment where
much of the work is performance orientated.
In covering these topics, and others, the training programme attempted to address
the problem of social exclusion—due to long-term unemployment; a misunderstand-
ing regarding skills demanded by employers; and self-exclusion by potential em-
ployees—by offering appropriate training and education in the demands of the style
labour market. Upon completion of the aesthetic labour training programme these
clients would be recruited by organisations seeking employees with a set of embod-
ied capacities and skills that would appeal to the organisation and their customers.
Clients could undergo further specific training, in house, and be effective employees,
embodying the ‘image’ of the organisation. Thus the success of this course would be
a practical contribution to creating and sustaining the employability of individuals
from social groups previously excluded from the labour market of growth sector
jobs.
A review of the completed course seems to demonstrate that the 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 in the programme. Field notes
Aesthetic Labour, Skills and Training 199
produced from participant observation supplemented this material. Many of the
clients suggested that the training they received on the pilot programme helped to
improve their confidence levels. Although the pilot was a voluntary programme for
existing trainees, one client suggested that the course should be compulsory, while
others suggested that it should be longer.
Feedback from the trainees highlighted that aesthetic skills were successfully
transferred to them throughout the duration of the training course. In particular the
course successfully addressed the need for confidence building in the long-term
unemployed. An unexpected finding from the data, considering the lack of attention
to aesthetic skills formation, was the trainees’ awareness of the necessity to ‘perform
a role’ and present a certain persona in interactive service work. Trainees discussed
techniques such as role playing, presenting a different version of themselves and
acting out a role, in their interactions with others while carrying out their work,
aspects all clearly redolent of Bell’s game or Goffman’s notions of presentation of
self. Typical comments from trainees on the course included:
I know how to behave differently at work. I mean I still speak in a kind of
monotone but I am more aware of it now and try not to.
In every job, particularly when you are working with people … you are the
first person that they see and they are going to form an impression of you
the first time they see you.
After not working for a long time you forget how to dress, how to deal with
people on a day-to-day basis. The course helps with that kind of thing.
I realise that personal appearance is important, I didn’t bother before but
now at work I do. I mean I still wear my biker 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 import-

ant 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 training. The purpose of such a training programme 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 training and an indication of the current mismatch
between training, skills and employability can be seen in an unpublished survey of
the long-term unemployed in Glasgow (Cerretti, 2000). The sample, which was
representative of the long-term unemployed in both Glasgow and the UK in terms
of age, sex and length of unemployment, examined New Deal trainees. Although
most job growth in the city is in hotels, restaurants and retail, the survey found little
training being offered or undertaken for the skills required in these industries.
Instead, training occurred in work in which the number of jobs are expected to
decline over the coming years, for example office administration [4]. Cerretti
200 D. Nickson et al.
concluded that although the long-term unemployed gained skills through Govern-
ment training schemes, those skills were not appropriate and the unemployed have
not been made more employable with this training. A second problem highlighted
in the survey is that the unemployed tend to aspire to jobs in which they have had
previous experience—again in declining industries. That the unemployed believe
that recruitment and selection is predominantly based on previous experience then
creates an unemployment trap. There was also poor appreciation amongst the
trainees of the industries in which most job growth was and will be, creating a
discrepancy between perception and reality of job opportunities.
Preventing future skills demand and training provision mismatch needs to be
tackled. Given the lack of understanding from the unemployed about developments
in the labour market and employers’ skill demands, another aid would be the
provision of better labour market intelligence (and for all), at the point of exit from

schools, entrance and exit from further and higher education, and through the
Employment Service. This intelligence needs to be authoritative, and sensitive to
both supply and demand issues. We would suggest this provision would result from
cooperation between the suppliers, users and funders of labour market data, such as
academics, trade unions, employers, training providers, and local and national
government agencies [5].
These organisations, agencies and individuals would also do well to appreciate the
point we noted earlier. Whilst it is true that all services employers require some
aesthetic skills of their employees, different companies require different aesthetics.
One shoe, or vocational training programme, does not fit all. Some companies will
require basic aesthetic skills training for their employees, others in the 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 services should
include some element of personal aesthetic skills formation.
Conclusion
In this article we have pointed out that there currently exists misunderstandings and
misconceptualisations about work and employment in the new economy. A range of
skills pertaining to the putative new and old economies are needed by employers.
Appreciating this range opens up awareness of not only broadening skill needs but
also the limitations of current training provision. The article also noted the relation-
ship between aesthetic labour and employer skill demands, and particularly the need
to be aware of equipping unemployed people with a range of skills in order that they
might access jobs growth opportunities. Evidence suggests that the unemployed may
be excluded from these jobs, particularly those in the style labour market. Unfortu-
nately current vocational training provision for these jobs is limited. On the one
hand, not enough account is made of the importance of these jobs, and on the other
there is a lack of sensitivity about the range of skills needed in these jobs. These
issues must be addressed. The Wise Group initiative is one such attempt.
We would recognise here that there is another, very real, issue about the quality
of the jobs to which Wise Group trainees may go. Hospitality, in particular, has a

Aesthetic Labour, Skills and Training 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 and the Working Time Directive
have had some impact in improving the quality of employment in areas such as
hospitality (DfEE, 2000). Moreover recent work by Burkitt (2001) suggests that
service work more generally is not immutably condemned to be low waged and low
skilled. There may also be other forms of remuneration which are available to those
in overt style labour market jobs, for example discounted designer clothing and
work-related personal services such as hairdressing (Nickson et al., 2001; Pettinger,
2002). It is also noteworthy that hospitality and retail can offer rapid career
progression, often without formal qualifications. Resultantly, we would argue that
concern about certain social groups being bypassed by developments in the new
economy means there has to be certain amount of pragmatism in terms of policy
responses. Indeed, there is also clearly a need for joined-up policy thinking and
policy-making to continue to improve the quality of jobs that can be accessed by
long-term unemployed people—a point strongly argued by Burkitt (2001). Attempts
to assist the long-term unemployed, then, may not simply be about condemning
them to a future of low-wage and low-skill employment. Consequently, whilst
recognising very real concerns about the quality of jobs, we would argue that this
does not invalidate the need for such training.
The same could be said of notions of social control. We accept that the aestheti-
cisation of labour involves the organisational mobilisation, development and com-
modification of individuals’ embodied capacities and attributes and, ultimately, for
reasons that benefit the organisation.Inthis respect it has a parallel in emotional
labour, and the two can be seen as complementary (Witz et al., 2003). It might be
said that management have now attempted to control workers’ knowledge, bodies
and emotions. But this attempt, as the trainee quotes above indicate, is simply that,
an attempt; and intent and outcome are not the same. Moreover, the long-term
unemployed—the focus of this article—can benefit. In this respect, we also do not

share Gorz’s scepticism of the pernicious effects of training the long-term unem-
ployed in things such as interpersonal and aesthetic skills, skills often taken for
granted by the middle class. We would suggest that concerns about aesthetic labour
as a form of social control may well reflect middle-class mores. And herein lies
ambivalence. Aesthetic labour is potentially heralded as a form of social control by
the middle class, whilst it is yet used by them for their own benefit in work and
employment (see, for example Spillane, 2000). As we noted earlier, the work of
Bourdieu is useful here in delineating ways in which the middle class, in particular,
have always sought to utilise physical and cultural capital. The Wise Group training
programme is not aiming for what might be termed the ‘Eliza Doolittle syndrome’
(Warhurst & Nickson, 2001), that is the complete reinvention of individuals to some
idealised and pure Foucaultian-type (Foucault, 1990) aesthetic or style. Rather, it
denotes the equipping of the long-term unemployed with ‘masks for tasks’ in order
that they can present an appropriate persona in attempting to access employment in
the service economy. The Wise Group initiative aims to ensure that in this process
those previously excluded from growth sector jobs have an opportunity to success-
202 D. Nickson et al.
fully access meaningful employment. As a consequence, we would argue that such
training provision is important for other similar restructuring urban economies in
the UK. The rise in aesthetic labour increases the potential for discrimination but
creating training initiatives of this type offers a more realistic approach to addressing
social exclusion than ignoring or condemning the emerging style labour market—
options which could hamper individual employability, firm productivity and national
competitiveness.
Notes
[1] Alan Watt works for the Royal Bank of Scotland but was previously employed by the Wise
Group.
[2] For further explanation of these terms see Warhurst and Thompson (1999).
[3] Similar criticism is now emerging of employment generation policy in the US (see for
example Lafer, 2002).

[4] This problem was compounded by the fact that training in office administration did not
include call centre work. Nevertheless, call centre jobs have increased in Glasgow from 200
in 1992 to over 10,000 by 1998.
[5] Within the Scottish context, this practice is possibly emerging with the establishment of the
Scottish Labour Market Intelligence Unit by the Scottish Executive and Scottish Enterprise,
recently renamed Future Skills Scotland.
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