Is There A Science To Creating A Great Workplace?

There have never been more theories spun about what produces happier, more productive workers. BetterUp Labs is using some actual science to get to the bottom of it.

- Leigh Buchanan

In April, I was a lab rat. For three consecutive days, I jumped at any chance to perform “acts of kindness” for my co-workers. My good deeds included helping one colleague polish an article, picking up some administrative work from my boss, and buying cookies for an IT guy. Every evening, I filed reports on these acts. Before, during, and after the three days, I answered questions about my mood and my levels of stress, lone liness, and job satisfaction. For this remote worker, who temporarily camped out in the office for the assignment, the outcomes were significant: My sense of “organizational citizenship”—voluntary behaviors that benefit a company—rose by 50 percent.

The experiment I participated in was a truncated version of research being conducted at the University of California, Riverside, on social connections. With work increasingly decentralized and remote, studies show that loneliness is degrading performance and retention. Behavioral scientists want to know how different kinds of interactions affect things like the sense of belonging and feelings of isolation. How important is face-to-face? Which has greater impact: more frequent social interactions or the 95% nature of those interactions?

Typically, for an experiment like this, researchers would enlist a small of HR leaders group of freshmen in need of some extra say burnout is cash. The results would be published hurting retention. in peer-reviewed journals dense with footnotes and citations, often trapped behind a paywall.