Research is increasingly establishing links between the quality of communication a worker receives and that worker’s personal health. Worker satisfaction has been tied to productivity for years, but extensive research has now found that interpersonal communication has a surprising impact upon personal health. Sounds like there’s more than one reason to get rid of asshole employees and managers. They impact not only productivity, but also the cost of employee health coverage.
The research shows that persistent messages of hostility, domination, not caring and avoiding issues are examples of patterns that create stress and impact more than productivity. They also negatively affect a person’s immune system. Indeed, when stressful interactions occur repeatedly, they are more likely to lead to physiological problems and even shorten one’s life span. That’s one reason blue collar workers rarely collect more than a couple years of social security after retirement. They have little control over their work situation, so they die young. Life span is clearly a class-based issue.
Bob Sutton reports on a recent study on the impact of nasty interactions. Andrew Miner, Theresa Glom, and Charles Hulin did a clever study in which each of forty-one employees carried palm-size computers. Each completed a brief survey via the device at four random intervals throughout the workday, over a two-to-three week period. The device would alert the employee, a short survey would be presented on the screen, and the employee would have twenty minutes to report (among other things) if he or she had a recent interaction with a supervisor or a coworker, and whether it was positive ornegative. Employees completed a checklist about their current mood, whether they were “blue,” “contented,” “happy,” and so on. The employee had more positive than negative interactions; for example about 30% of interactions with coworkers were positive and 10% were negative. But negative interactions had a fivefold stronger effect on mood than positive interactions—so nasty people pack a lot more wallop than their more civilized counterparts.
So which kind of relationship communication is better for your health? Those who experience helpful, instrumental relationships and emotional support are more likely to experience greater physical well-being. That’s true outside of work as well. A person’s immune system profits from satisfying social ties.
Related research also studied whether married people are healthier than single people. There’s widespread belief that being married somehow makes you live longer and enjoy a healthier life. But people in troubled marriages with dissatisfied spouses tend to experience more health problems. And surveys show that the health and longevity of people who get married and stay married isn’t all that different from people who stay single. So the issue is not marriaghe per se, but the quality of the interaction in that marriage (or single life) that makes the difference. People who are happy with their relationships, whether married or single, are more likely to have a health advantage.