It’s not just business: why emotions are central to workplace management

“It’s not personal, it’s strictly business.” This line, which echoes throughout Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 gangster film The Godfather, epitomises the classic view of management: doing business is, above all, about making money, even if it means sacrificing all of the personal, social aspects of work.

However, the ongoing crisis of mental health in the workplace is forcing managers to take employees’ emotional wellbeing into account.

To understand emotional wellbeing, we must first understand what emotions are: brief, intense responses to specific events that matter to us and affect our behaviour.

Studying emotions is vital because they are much more than just subjective experiences. On the contrary, they are what guide our actions – in the workplace, for instance, sadness reduces performance, while anger leads to conflict.

Simply saying that someone “feels bad” is therefore not enough: understanding their specific emotions is the first step towards understanding their behaviour in the workplace.

Emotions at work

To understand people’s emotional lives in the workplace, we carried out a study of 102 workers from various sectors. The aim was to understand how, and how often, six basic emotions – happiness, surprise, sadness, disgust, fear and anger – arise in day-to-day working life. Our subjects reconstructed their working days over a 15-day period, paying attention to those work-related events they considered particularly important.

We collected a total of 1,499 accounts of these events, assessing whether they were positive or negative (their “valence”) and how novel or disruptive they were (their “strength”).

The results revealed several important points:

1. The workplace is generally a happy place. Happiness was the most common emotion – present in 67% of the events reported – and the most intense, followed by surprise (54%). There may be a survival bias at play here, as people who consistently experience negative emotions tend to leave their jobs.

2. Negative emotions are less common, but more pronounced. Anger (almost 40%) and sadness (32%) were more prevalent than fear (26%) and disgust (20%). Furthermore, negative emotions rarely occur in isolation; they tend to occur in combination, particularly in the case of anger, sadness and disgust.

3. Strength had a multiplying effect. It is not enough for a work-related event to be rated as good or bad. For an intense emotion to emerge, the event that triggers it must be strong – that is to say, disruptive or novel. The interaction between the value and the strength of the event predicts almost all emotions.

4. Fear behaved differently to other emotions. It was the only emotion that depended purely on how intense or disruptive an event was, rather than on its valence. It also depended very clearly on individual workers’ traits or circumstances. Due to their personality (high scores on neuroticism and pessimism) or their job roles, some workers were more prone to experiencing this emotion.

5. There were very few gender differences. Contrary to traditional stereotypes, we found that gender has little influence on the intensity of workers’ emotions. Gender only affected the frequency with which certain emotions occurred: joy was more common among men, while disgust was more common among women.

What triggers each emotion?

Analysing the 1,499 diaries enabled us to identify which situations act as triggers for each emotion. As the workplace is a social environment, most of these situations involved managers, colleagues or clients:

• Joy was fuelled by achievement and human connection. It arose most strongly when successfully completing tasks, enjoying a collaborative environment, or receiving sincere appreciation, such as a thank you note from a manager.

• Surprise arose from a breach of expectations. Its triggers included unforeseen decisions, such as a client not renewing a contract, or unexpected gestures of support, such as a team meal paid for by the company.

• Anger arose when workers perceived unfair situations, public disrespect, humiliation or the arbitrary obstruction of their goals.

• Sadness was associated with loss and unfulfilled expectations. It arose in the face of professional disappointments and failures, or when a valued colleague left the team.

• Disgust in the workplace was usually related to morality, in response to ethically repugnant or toxic behaviour, harassment or corporate hypocrisy.

• Fear was triggered by threats and safety concerns. Unpredictable managers and structural instability within the company are some of the factors that can set off this powerful warning signal.

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The foundation of workplace wellbeing

Our research clearly shows that the workplace is an environment rich in emotional experiences. This means every managerial decision, timetable change or piece of feedback can set off an emotional chain reaction.

Although not all setbacks can be avoided, organisations can actively shape their emotional climate by deliberately fostering positive experiences and aiming to mitigate the impact of negative events.

Looking after teams requires us to go beyond seeing work as merely a place to do business. Our organisations are communities rich in emotional bonds, and they deserve our close attention.

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José Navarro receives funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.