Emotional wellness at work is important. Our emotions can have a big impact on our work and on our relationships at work. So, it’s not exactly breaking news that positive employee emotions would have a positive influence on the workplace.
Research shows that positive emotions impact multiple areas at work such as:
We wanted to get a better handle on emotions in the workplace, so we conducted some research. When we asked employees about the positive emotions they experience most often at work, survey respondents mentioned three positive emotions most often—comfortable, satisfied, and enthusiastic.
Here’s what participants had to say about these emotions and how you can improve each one.
Comfort is often described as contentment, happiness, and relaxation. When employees feel comfortable at work, they are free to be themselves. Comfortable employees are more relaxed and find joy in their work because they feel understood for who they are and understand how they contribute to the bigger picture.
Satisfaction is an emotion that is in the eye of the beholder. Subjective to opinion, it’s important to consider your employees’ opinions individually as it relates to their own satisfaction at work. Luckily, your engagement survey typically contains a lot of valuable feedback that you can use to provide an individual-style approach to your engagement initiatives.
Your employees work hard every day to meet ambitious organizational goals. This hard work can often be accompanied by some negative emotion—which is where enthusiasm comes into play. Enthusiasm allows employees to feel confident in their work and excited to wake up and go into the office each day.
While these emotions are helpful to explore further in your engagement efforts, there are other positive emotions that can be improved with a little attention. Your employees might also experience feelings of calm, energy, excitement, happiness, joy, peace, and relaxation while they are working.
Seeking out and encouraging all positive emotions will help bolster positivity organization-wide and lead to a better workplace culture overall.
To learn more about how you can improve emotional wellness in your workplace, download our ebook, Emotions in the Workplace.
Published December 3, 2019 | Written By Jocelyn Stange