Amy Colbert, professor in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship in the Tippie College of Business and researcher affiliate in the Center for Social Science Innovation (CSSI), has published a recent study that links changes in employees’ mood with how important they perceive their job’s tasks.
Prior research has shown that employees find meaning in their work when they view their job’s tasks as important or significant. While external interactions with managers and job beneficiaries can lead employees to believe their tasks are more significant, these interactions are short-lived and employees can become desensitized to the affirmations.
To understand how non-external interactions impact employees’ perception of task significance, Colbert examined changes in employees’ mood.
“Because moods fluctuate frequently, we suspected that changes in mood might change the way that people view the purpose of their work and their ability to make a significant impact,” says Colbert.
Colbert studied thirty-eight employees at a small, Midwest-based organization that marketed planned gifts for non-profits. Employees engaged in a variety of tasks, including marketing the company’s services, designing print and digital materials, and servicing customer accounts.
At the beginning and end of their workday for ten days, employees completed a survey that assessed their positive and negative emotional state. Employees also reported how significant they perceived that day’s work tasks, and any helping or withdrawal behaviors they demonstrated throughout the day.
Colbert’s survey characterized helping behaviors as spontaneous, outside-of-job-description behaviors that benefited the employee’s coworkers. Withdrawal was defined in the survey as moments when the employee daydreamed, spent time on personal matters, or put less effort into their job.
After analyzing the survey responses, Colbert discovered that when an employee had an increase in positive mood or a decrease in negative mood, they perceived their daily tasks to have increased significance. In turn, the more significant an employee saw their tasks, the more likely they were to help a coworker and the less likely they were to withdraw from their work.
Colbert also determined that when employees helped a coworker due to their positive mood, they were more likely to begin the next workday in the same high spirit. Interestingly, however, employees who engaged in few withdrawal behaviors, because they saw their tasks as significant, were more likely to begin the next workday in a sour mood since they hadn’t taken breaks the day prior.
Colbert believes these findings reflect the possibility that emotional changes affect how people process information and then behave. In this case, an increase in positive emotions or a decrease in negative emotions prompted people to see their job tasks as more significant and then engage in helping behaviors.
To increase employees’ perception of their job’s task significance, Colbert believes organizations and supervisors should tap into the effect employee emotion plays.
“Organizations and managers should take actions to reduce frustration and anger and increase enjoyment and excitement at work,” Colbert states.
“Additionally, employees should plan breaks to avoid burnout,” she says, responding to the finding that engaging in fewer withdrawal behaviors led to a negative mood the following workday.
The study titled “Stacking bricks or building a cathedral? How affective shifts shape perceptions of daily task significance” was published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior. Jordan Nielsen, associate professor at Purdue University, was the study’s co-author.
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