Promoting Workplace Interactions

Chancellor and his team studied interactions among coworkers.  They determined that “individuals who share similar levels of well-being (e.g., positive affect, life satisfaction, need satisfaction, and job satisfaction) were more likely to socialize with one another.”

The researchers also make recommendations about how workplaces should be organized, based on their findings: “companies may want to reorganize workspaces so that employees high in . . . job satisfaction are spread evenly throughout the organization. . . . Our research highlights the surprising role that individuals’ well-being plays in the formation and influence of workplace relationships: Emotions can bring people together and ripple out from person to person. Specifically, our results imply that job satisfaction and going above and beyond one’s work duties may be particularly contagious, and thus managers seeking to improve morale might consider placing personnel strategically, knowing that in these particular dimensions, they may influence others.”

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