WEEK 6 Flashcards
”Work is a person’s strongest
__________?”
”Work is a person’s strongest
tie to reality”
Role of work in everyday life: Traditional (industrial) VS New (post-industrial)
Traditional (industrial)
* Satisfies material needs
* Following predictable format (space, time, tasks)
* Separated from community and rest of life
* Life outside work satisfied social and emotional needs
New (post-industrial)
* Provide individual with meaning and identity
* Expected to fulfill social and emotional needs in addition to material
Benefits of work?
- What are the two types?
- Why negative effects does unemployment have?
Work provides different types of benefits:
1. Manifest – income
2. Latent – psychological, benefits: status, identity, social contact, activity, time structure
Why is Wellbeing at work important?
- Many of us spend a lot of time at work, and thinking about work
- If work supports health and wellbeing, it can improve lives well outside the scope of the regular working day
- Many factors which lead to wellbeing are free – not a luxury
- Improving the world of work good way of reaching many people – contributing to making the world a better place!
- Workplaces can become part of the solution of improving health and wellbeing in New Zealand.
What is wellbeing?
- Subjective positive feeling
- Hedonic – pleasure, “happiness”
- Eudaimonic – meaningfulness, self-actualisation
- More than mental health – positive experiences and meaning
What can we do to improve our own wellbeing?
- What are the 3 ways in which we can increase wellbeing?
- Focus on increasing resources that help us handle stress better:
1. Meaning and sense of purpose
2. Connectedness
3. Positive emotions and kindness
What are three basic needs that we are motivated to fulfill? (based on Self-determination theory)
- Relatedness – being part of something
- Competence – feeling like we are good at something, getting positive feedback, optimal challenge
- Autonomy – sense of control, choosing important aspects of our life
Creating meaning for YOURSELF – in work or study
- What is this process called?
- What is the aim of it?
- What are 3 things that an individual can do to alter their meaning of work?
Called ”job crafting” = Explore what changes you can make to create the job you want
Employee-initiated changes of work:
1. Task: Altering or taking on new work tasks
2. Relational: Exploring new collaborations at work
3. Cognitive: Re-defining purpose of tasks
- Aim: to make work more engaging and meaningful
Creating jobs that support and increase well-being
- What is this process called?
- What are the three important psychological states necessary
- Process called: “job design”
- Three important psychological states necessary:
1. Experienced meaningfulness of the work
2. Experienced responsibility for outcome of the work (compare to control)
3. Knowledge of results of the work activities (feedback)
Demand-Control model
- What is it? (2 components?)
- Findings?
2 components:
1. Job Demands – tasks to do, both type and amount
- Job Decision Latitude Control
* Control over tasks
* Participation in decision making (about tasks)
* Competence to exercise control (general sense of preparedness)
Findings:
* Job Decision Latitude Control appears to be most important factor
* Important to achieve balance (high demands and control = most favorable for well-being)
* High demands not always problematic
* Low demands can be as detrimental as high demands (boredom) when paired with low control
Job Demands-Resources model
- What is it? (2 components?)
- Findings?
- Demands – conditions that require effort/skill and may have psychological/physical costs
- Resources – aspects of work which
1. Aid in the achievement of goals
2. Reduce job demands
3. Stimulate personal growth
High Demands + High resources = Motivation
High Demands + Low resources = Strain
Dual processes – resources and demands act independent of each other
1. Chronic demands may exhaust resources and prevent their positive effects
2. Resources may be both buffering and motivational
Resources and Recovery
- What are they important for in relation to high demand situations?
- High demands can be fine, as long as we have resources
- We can deal with high stress as long as we make time for recovery
- Stress + enough recovery = is okay (sustainable)
- Stress + not enough recovery => burnout (not sustainable)
Emotions at work
- importance?
- problem with modern theories?
- Positive work experience = positive emotions
- Explains reactions and behaviors (=> Motivating to end emotion or continue emotion)
- Happy worker = productive worker (lots of evidence)
- Also – Happy worker = better colleague! (positive feedback loop)
- Serve as a heuristic for judgment (e.g. “How do I feel about this?”)
Emotion recognition: become aware of what others feel through emotional recognition (Other people’s emotions are very important too)
Problems:
* Positive emotions tend to emphasize the positive, overconfidence possible
* High negative affect (e.g., stress) MORE detrimental to performance than positive affect
* Many theories of work are based on rational ideas – discounting role of emotions
What is Emotional labour?
- What are the 3 types?
- Which type is bad which is good?
- Expressing emotions that are expected/prescribed – may be contrary to actual emotions
e.g. your boss tells you to be kind to everyone, even rude customers (smiling at them even when they’re being mean to you) - Adjusting emotional expression to achieve intended outcome
- Following organizational display rules (e.g., customer service script)
- Emotional dissonance
TYPES:
* Surface acting (suppressing true emotions and displaying fake ones)
- especially detrimental
– burnout, exhaustion, customer dissatisfaction (customer may detect it’s fake)
- Deep acting: an effortful process to change internal feelings, producing more natural and genuine emotional displays
- more beneficial for employee and customer
- Expressing genuine emotion
Emotional agility
- What is it?
- 4 ways to be more agile?
- Understanding what emotions tell us
=> We don’t have to act on them - Emotions are ”signposts” for what is going on and how it might affect us
- Ways of being more agile
1. Recognize your patterns
2. Label your thoughts and emotions (higher specificity makes it easier to act)
3. Accept them
4. Act on your VALUES (i.e., not directly on our emotions)
