Ensuring managers are thinking about their teams holistically can decrease the negative outcomes of emotional job demands in the workplace. It is not necessarily just one (emotionally pressured) individual in a network who shares their stress and generates a contagion effect, but the combined effect of many pressured individuals. Therefore, job rotation is not always an effective cure. Building the right team is. For future research, it is key that we develop our understanding of how work-based social networks mitigate emotional pressures, as well as reducing work-life conflict – and how this may affect performance. We also need to investigate the role that job demands can play in hindering life satisfaction more generally, and whether network ties can act as a buffer against this. This is particularly worthy of investigation as our workplaces become ever-more hybrid, and the line between work- and home-life is eroded.
effect. Such findings demonstrate just how vital receiving support from a network can be in mitigating the effects of emotional job demands and that this has a positive effect on key outcomes such as employee performance. These results indicate that individuals can balance the negative effects of emotional job demands on their performance through their work-based social ties, even if these ties result in an emotional contagion effect on their colleagues. So how can employees, and their organisations, ensure that the positive impact of social network ties for some outweighs the negative impact on others? To ensure performance remains strong, organisations should look at enabling employees to develop strong work-based social networks by ensuring they have support outside of their immediate work friendship groups – and, crucially, by ensuring that staff aren’t experiencing too many emotional demands in their roles in the first place. Job rotation Tools such as job rotation could counteract high emotional job demands. Rotating employees through different roles can help ensure they do not feel the full effects of demand from a job for too long. Such rotations also help to freshen up employees’ networks by introducing them to new colleagues
130 employees at a manufacturing company, surveying them on their work environment and the demands that come with their role. We asked the employees about their work-based social networks – who they were connected to – and how they sought support from their network. We then asked supervisors from the same company to evaluate the individual performance of each employee, and used a statistical modelling framework to analyse the simultaneous changes in employees’ social networks, emotional demands, and performance. This model also accounted for the extent to which individual demographics, such as tenure and gender, influence changes in the network, emotional demands, and performance. The results of the research clearly revealed a social contagion effect – when behaviours and affects flow from one person to another. Specifically, emotional demands flowed from one person to another through their social relationships. High emotional job demands Individuals with high emotional job demands benefit from the support of their network of relationships as it gives them the opportunity to vent. However, what is the effect on the person providing the emotional support? For the person playing confidante, there is little reward in doing so. They may act as a buffer for their highly stressed colleague, but also end up experiencing a more stressful job environment because of this. Our research shows that work- based social ties are a double-edged sword; some benefit and others are set to suffer. In addition, our research shows that for those individuals with high emotional job demands who build wider work-based social networks there are positive outcomes over and above having a shoulder to lean on: these supportive relationships result in a beneficial impact on employee performance. Those who had a strong and extensive work- based social network felt less of an impact on their performance when experiencing emotional job demands; those with smaller networks were more likely to feel the negative
on a regular basis, and can help to break apart unproductive network relationships. Organisations should also think longer and
‘Our research shows that work-based social ties are a double- edged sword; some benefit and others are set to suffer’
harder about the team and group dynamics that they are creating,
rather than focusing solely on putting individuals into particular roles. Individuals are certainly important, but the way in
which people can collaborate with each other, and bring the best out of each other too, is, arguably, more important. The sum of a team is greater than its parts.
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Ambition | BE IN BRILLIANT COMPANY
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