It’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
New research suggests pretending to be happy at work can actually lead to worker burnout.
A study from the University of Georgia found that employees who changed their mood or forced themselves to be in a good mood were more exhausted at the end of the work day.
Workplace fatigue and eventual burnout, in fact, could be a component of quiet quitting or leaving altogether.
“Our entire literature is built on this idea that we want people to have positive emotions all the time,” Fadel Matta, an associate professor at the Terry College of Business and the lead study author, said in a press release. “That’s the overarching goal that’s put out there, but it ignores the state any one employee is in at any given time. Some employees start the day in a positive place, others come into work in a bad mood.”
The researchers found that employees who forced themselves to feel better throughout the day were exhausted by the time it was over. Getty ImagesResearchers surveyed 162 employees in various fields of work, during which the workers rated their moods five times a day for 10 days. Participants noted if they had helped on a project, been short with a colleague or had difficulty focusing on a task at hand.
When the results were in, the team discovered that when employees self-adjusted their mood to seem happier at work, they were more emotionally drained by the end of the work day. The mental exhaustion also meant they couldn’t handle more difficult tasks or peer interactions like they usually would.
Employees were less likely to be able to perform difficult tasks or interact with peers. Getty Images“At work, that means you’re more likely to be short with co-workers or peruse the internet rather than do your work,” said Emma Frank, an assistant professor of management at the University of New Hampshire. “Even if you’re feeling good and ending your day on a high note, you’re not going to be ready to perform your best.”
This can eventually lead to the dreaded worker burnout, which is the catalyst for the quiet quitting trend sweeping corporate America.
“I think that a lot of times we might assume that ending the day on a high note would be a good thing, but what we found is that starting from that low point and getting to that high point depletes the resources you have left in the day,” Frank added.
Instead of starting the day in a bad mood, researchers want to encourage employees to be in a good mood before they even arrive at work.
“We want people to be in a good place, but we want them to come into work in a good place,” Matta said. “If something bad just happened to you at work, I think the work that’s required to get you to a better place may not be worth it.”
