The Negativity Virus: Curing the Disease of Employee Disengagement

According to a Gallup Poll conducted at the end of last year, only 13% of employees feel “engaged” at work. In other words, only 1 out of every 8 employees feel that their work is valued, and that they are contributing to their workplace in a way that is meaningful to both themselves and their coworkers. Perhaps even more shockingly, the same poll found that 63% are disengaged, defined as lacking “motivation and less likely to invest discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes.” But the real kicker? 24% are actively disengaged. Not only are they unfocused and unmotivated, almost a quarter of employees feel so negative about work that the poll labels these folks as “liable to spread negativity to coworkers.”

To be fair, the prospects look a little better in the United States, with 29% engaged, 54% disengaged, and 18% actively disengaged. But over half of our workforce feeling disengaged and almost a fifth likely to emanate severe negativity shouldn’t make any employer or HR manager feel very warm and fuzzy. More engaged employees mean a higher retention rate, better customer relations (where applicable), and more efficient output of quality work. If less than 30% of the average company’s employees fit the bill, that doesn’t bode well for the success of many companies—or the status of the economy.

To state the obvious, if an employee doesn’t feel like their work is meaningful or valued, practically all motivation for creating high quality work is stripped away. Studies have shown that negativity spreads like a plague—but happiness can too. To describe this phenomenon, researchers have coined the phrase “emotional contagion.” This term lends itself to considering stress and pessimistic vibes less like an individual emotional state, and more like a contagious disease. Now if 18% of your workforce contracts a virus and 54% are known to be susceptible, wouldn’t this leave you wishing for some sort of vaccine?

Lucky for us, many variations of employee engagement software already exist. Several options try to “gamify” work by provoking a little friendly competition between coworkers or introducing game-like training modules. Simpler solutions simply encourage employees to help themselves to the Internet. But as we know, the Internet isn’t always exactly a breeding ground for positivity. Social networks may connect employees to their friends—but through frequent use, they’re also likely distancing themselves from the workplace and reducing the possibility of developing strong relationships with their coworkers. As a sense of belonging is key to developing employee engagement, escapism probably isn’t the best option. Another problem with these methods is that there is no easy way to know if these tactics are actually improving the employees’ feelings of workplace satisfaction. If symptomatic changes aren’t visible to management, what’s to say that the emotional contagion vaccination even worked?

UpJoy is employee engagement software that isn’t a game, a competition, or a free pass to keep a tab open for Facebook. Unlike other products, this software doesn’t just try to treat the symptoms, it goes after the root of the problem: employee stress and negativity. UpJoy provides employees with limited access to handpicked images and videos specifically chosen for their uplifting qualities, while incorporating experience sampling so management knows how well the medicine works.

We can’t afford to have 72% of our employees feeling disengaged. Can you? Visit www.upjoy.org for more information and a free trial. 

The Right Kind of Break: Corporate Wellness Made Easy

 

There are countless stories of the “horrible boss,” the “sadistic manager,” and the “incompetent CEO.” These archetypal figures are grossly overpaid and under-worked, leaving their staff feeling both undervalued and stressed. Perhaps these images weren’t simply born out of the wild imaginations of a few disgruntled employees over the years, but we know that sometimes management has no choice but to play “the bad guy.”

Being in management is difficult. A manager is responsible (at least in part) for the success of the business, and few things are more stressful than feeling culpable for the actions of other people. When something goes wrong, it falls on the shoulders of management to dole out the bad news. If the company can’t survive without downsizing, the manager has to choose who gets the boot. And even when everything is going smoothly on a corporate level, employees might still just be unhappy; and more often than not, a negative work culture probably looks like the fault of management.

Is the staff’s happiness and satisfaction at work truly under the manager’s purview? Maybe not in so many words, but their productivity and engagement might be--and unhappy people are 12% less productive than their happy counterparts (http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/35451/1/522164196.pdf).  Not only is mood important for day-to-day performance, but it can reasonably be assumed that people who enjoy being at work are less likely to take sick days unnecessarily or be looking to move on to another company the second their contracts are up.

But how can a manager feasibly take on responsibility for the mental well-being of their staff members? Recent research at the University of Cincinnati suggests that it might be as simple as employers allowing their employees a few online breaks throughout the day. Breaks can refresh and rejuvenate mentally exhausted employees, helping them to keep up a positive attitude and workflow throughout the day. Giving employees even a short change of pace to focus on something fun or uplifting can make a world of difference in bringing both positivity and productivity into the workplace.

Of course, giving employees the opportunity to spend an unspecified amount of time in the limitless expanse of the Internet during the workday has the potential to have the opposite effect on productivity. Moreover, it would be hard to track how much of a positive difference these breaks were truly making on an individual employee’s sense of wellbeing.

However, using UpJoy, management has a way to limit the amount of break time, while empirically tracking the emotional impact of each employee’s break. Corporate wellness has always been positive for the employee; now it can be simple and cost effective too.