Washington, April 05 (ANI): A new study of telephone customer service representatives found that employees' moods when they clocked in tended to affect how they felt the rest of the day.
Early mood was linked to their perceptions of customers and to how they reacted to customers' moods.
And most importantly to managers, employee mood had a clear impact on performance, including both how much work employees did and how well they did it.
'We saw that employees could get into these negative spirals where they started the day in a bad mood and just got worse over the course of the day," said Steffanie Wilk, associate professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.
"That's why it is so important for companies to find ways to help their workers start off the day on the right foot."
The study involved 29 customer service representatives who handled phone calls made by customers to a large U.S. insurance company. Over the course of about three weeks, the participants filled out measures of their mood at the beginning of the workday and two other random times during each day. At those two other points in the day, they also indicated how their latest customer seemed to them, such as whether they were rude, calm, insulting or cheerful.
The results showed that when employees started the day in a good mood, they tended to rate customers more positively through the day. They also tended to feel more positively themselves as the day progressed.
But, perhaps surprisingly, negative customers didn't hurt employees who were already in a bad mood.
"We call it the 'misery loves company' effect," she said.
"If you're in a bad mood, it seems to help to talk to someone else who is feeling as bad as you. Maybe the employees were able to blow off some steam by reacting to rude customers," she added.
Companies have a reason to be concerned about employee moods - they affect performance, the study showed.
Their results appear online in the Academy of Management Journal. (ANI)
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