A large number of empirical studies confirm that positive social connections at work produce highly desirable results. Treating one another with respect, gratitude, trust, and integrity.Īs a boss, how can you foster these principles? The research points to four steps to try:ġ.Emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work.Providing support for one another, including offering kindness and compassion when others are struggling.Caring for, being interested in, and maintaining responsibility for colleagues as friends.Our own research (see here and here) on the qualities of a positive workplace culture boils down to six essential characteristics: Wellbeing comes from one place, and one place only - a positive culture.Ĭreating a positive and healthy culture for your team rests on a few major principles. Employees prefer workplace wellbeing to material benefits. A Gallup poll showed that, even when workplaces offered benefits such as flextime and work-from-home opportunities, engagement predicted wellbeing above and beyond anything else. However, these companies still fail to take into account the research. The Center for American Progress estimates that replacing a single employee costs approximately 20% of that employee’s salary.įor these reasons, many companies have established a wide variety of perks from working from home to office gyms. And the turnover costs associated with recruiting, training, lowered productivity, lost expertise, and so forth, are significant. People go on the job market, decline promotions, or resign. Research shows that workplace stress leads to an increase of almost 50% in voluntary turnover. Importantly, businesses with highly engaged employees enjoyed 100% more job applications. In organizations with low employee engagement scores, they experienced 18% lower productivity, 16% lower profitability, 37% lower job growth, and 65% lower share price over time. In studies by the Queens School of Business and by the Gallup Organization, disengaged workers had 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents, and 60% more errors and defects. Engagement in work - which is associated with feeling valued, secure, supported, and respected - is generally negatively associated with a high-stress, cut-throat culture.Īnd disengagement is costly. While a cut-throat environment and a culture of fear can ensure engagement (and sometimes even excitement) for some time, research suggests that the inevitable stress it creates will likely lead to disengagement over the long term.
It takes a careful mix of mission, management, and culture. Stress-producing bosses are literally bad for the heart. In a large-scale study of over 3,000 employees conducted by Anna Nyberg at the Karolinska Institute, results showed a strong link between leadership behavior and heart disease in employees. One study showed that, the lower someone’s rank in a hierarchy, the higher their chances of cardiovascular disease and death from heart attacks. The stress of belonging to hierarchies itself is linked to disease and death.
Workplace stress has been linked to health problems ranging from metabolic syndrome to cardiovascular disease and mortality. Sixty percent to 80% of workplace accidents are attributed to stress, and it’s estimated that more than 80% of doctor visits are due to stress. economy because of workplace stress, and 550 million workdays are lost each year due to stress on the job. The American Psychological Association estimates that more than $500 billion is siphoned off from the U.S. Too many companies bet on having a cut-throat, high-pressure, take-no-prisoners culture to drive their financial success.īut a large and growing body of research on positive organizational psychology demonstrates that not only is a cut-throat environment harmful to productivity over time, but that a positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line.Īlthough there’s an assumption that stress and pressure push employees to perform more, better, and faster, what cutthroat organizations fail to recognize is the hidden costs incurred.įirst, health care expenditures at high-pressure companies are nearly 50 % greater than at other organizations.
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