Dive Brief:
- According to an article at Fast Company, scientists are learning that modeling good behavior at work has a surprising impact on office culture—especially during times when things aren’t going our way.
- Author Ted Karczewski, a marketing strategist, says negativity can be as contagious as any disease. Left to run its course unchecked, it breaks down lines of communication and halts a team's forward progress, he writes.
- Karczewski says a new report published in the Journal Of Applied Psychology offers early evidence that impoliteness can spread like wildfire in the workplace. What's more, a negative work culture can go on to cause bigger problems, altering how employees communicate and read situations.
Dive Insight:
While directly curtailing negativity across the company may be beyond the scope of most CHROs and HR executives, the article points to "practicing gratefulness," for example, as a habit of mind that's a great way to overcome a negative work culture.
Actions set standards that others take notice of—including peers, according to new study published in Evolution And Human Behavior. So that means HR leaders could seek ways to teach budding talent to measure and appreciate their own gains on their own terms. And that positive outlook will catch on.
Again, while it may not be something that HR leaders can impact directly outside their own department, innovative CHROs might figure out a way to incorporate that type of thinking into company-wide learning and other culture-driven programs for both rank-and-file workers, managers and even senior management.
