The role of emotions on the Workplace

by Anastasia Ouzouni

       
However, emotions play a very significant role in our working environment, in which we often spend the most of our day. In this article we will discuss about how place of work is affected by emotions, their kinds, their possible sources and mostly about their consequences.

The truth is that modern research is occupied with the subject of workplace emotions on 1983 with “The Managed Heart” by Hochschild’s who explains about emotional labor. Hochschild's research is followed by Cynthia Fisher’s, Daniel Goleman’s, Robert Lord’s and even more.

   
First of all we have to separate the meaning of emotions and moods as they are associative and compensated senses. Emotions are connected to specific facts or occasions and they are capable of disorganize thought processes. On the other hand, moods are an emotional situation which is not able to interrupt the flow of thoughts.

One reason that emotions are part of research is because every employee operates through his thoughts and feelings while at the same time affects around his co-workers. It is important to mention that the picture and role of the association are dependent, in one part, to emotions either if concerns interior environment either outside world or the perception of it.

In addition, emotions have a large variety (joy, stress, sadness, anger ) and they are dependent on internal and external factors. As internal factors can be mentioned leadership, payment, rewards and as exterior factors mainly family environment and personal life. Of course every employee has a different personality and for this reason the experience and expression of each emotion is not the same to all employees.

However, emotions are categorized generally into positive and negative. This separation is important for understanding the effects of every part.

   
Positive emotions (coming either from personal life or workplace), as easily concluded, have beneficial effects on the workplace. It is remarkable that they are responsible for the increase of productiveness and creativeness. An employee needs to feel satisfaction from his job as well as the environment between co-workers has to be characterized by team spirit. The result of these positive emotions is creativity, productivity, effectiveness and willingness to work. Furthermore, when a manager rewards his employees and highlights their achievements, seems to be more successful than someone who doesn’t have those abilities.

On the other hand, negative emotions have opposite effects. The overload of work, the absence of rewards and social relationships, the lack of guidance or support are possible to be the causes for creation of stress, anger, aggressive behavior or conflicts. All of them can disturb the environment between co-workers, decrease creativity and make employees not to be able to attribute on their work tasks.

   
In conclusion it would be incomplete, not to refer to emotional intelligence. That term is used to describe the ability of empathy and emotional control. A lot of researchers consider that it is necessary leadership’s qualification to guide employees without destroys cohesion.

Through all these can be illustrated the role of emotions on the workplace. They are part of working environment and definitely affect with various ways. Either positive either negative its research help to elicit the keys for success and to avoid non desired results on workplace.