Today is national stress awareness day. Stress has been no stranger in 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has impacted the way we work, communicate, learn and connect with others, adding new layers of stress to our everyday lives. Ginger, a mental health support platform, conducted a study that found that 7 out of 10 U.S. workers find the pandemic has been the most stressful time in their professional career, when compared to events such as September 11th or the 2007 Recession.
One reason that this pandemic has been so stressful is because it has stripped people of their sense of autonomy. In the workforce, work from home mandates and fears of furloughs, layoffs, or contracting the virus itself have all contributed to this lack of control. Research has shown that autonomy is an innate psychological need and is important to enhance a person’s self-motivation and well-being. A sense of control is also what many stress psychologists have found regulates the negative health outcomes of stress exposure.
With 42% of the U.S. labor force working from home, companies are looking for new ways to support their employees through this stressful time. A new article from the Journal of Applied Psychology has found interesting results that look at the impact of gratitude on employee behavior and, for the first time, examines how gratitude interventions influence those behaviors.
Gratitude is not a new concept to many of us. The positive psychology movement has brought gratitude interventions to a wider audience. Gratitude lists, gratitude letters, and educational groups are all interventions that have been researched over the years. Although many of these gratitude interventions have been found to increase a person’s well-being, little research has been done to understand why these interventions lead to positive behavior change. In their article, Locklear, Taylor, and Ambrose investigate the effects that a gratitude intervention has on negative workplace behaviors, such as rudeness, gossip, and ostracism, and what makes these interventions effective.
As a doctoral student in Industrial/organizational psychology this study’s findings are really interesting because they offer insight into the psychology behind how gratitude intervention works and they measure several different variables to come away with results that offer practical considerations to organizations. In their study, a sample of 147 employees from a management company in Colorado participated in a 10 day journaling intervention. Half of the participants received a prompt that asked them to list things in their job that they were grateful for. The study found that the gratitude journal decreased negative workplace behaviors by increasing a participant’s self-control resources.
What are self-control resources and why do they matter? Self-regulation theory suggests that self-control resources are the resources that affect a person’s impulses and reactions. Work can be demanding and if a person has had a long day, a long week, or even a long 7 months, these resources may be depleted. Fewer resources ultimately affects a person’s ability to modify their responses to something happening in the workplace or change their behaviors to follow social norms. Employees need ways to rest, recover, and refuel their self-control resources, otherwise an employer could be left with a workplace environment where more rudeness, gossip, and ostracism exist.
In a time when companies are looking for new ways to support their workforce and employees are feeling a lower sense of control, inexpensive interventions like a gratitude journal, may be a good way to increase an employee’s sense of autonomy and create a better workplace culture. As we close out 2020 and look to the new year, now is a great time to try this out with your team. Let me know how it goes!
