People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 16

ier when they go home from work. Normally
when supervisors conduct a debriefing, they
ask what went wrong. While this is necessary,
it may not be sufficient. If we are concerned
about worker wellbeing, we might also ask
what went well. We might find out where
employees made a difference or anticipated
and resolved a potential problem.
Managers might focus on helping people feel
a sense of accomplishment at work. They can
ask employees what they need to do their jobs
well and then try to find ways to give employees those resources. Managers should look
for opportunities to give employees positive
feedback when they do their jobs well.
As leaders, we should create times where we
can all pause and reflect. Find time to stop and
savor the positive moments that we had in our

successes. Leaders should take very seriously
the notion that what they do in the everyday
small interactions can affect the health and
wellbeing of employees-and their ability to
accomplish their goals.

Implications for HR Leaders
We are hard-wired to attend the negative,
therefore we need to balance and consciously
focus on the positive. There is a growing body
of evidence showing that the little things that
happen to people during the day have a significant effect on their health and wellbeing
and their ability to contribute effectively and
creatively. Ultimately, the bottom line can be
benefited by positive events and positive
reflection interventions, especially if your
company has a sincere overarching goal of

they want to accomplish, and we need to recognize how we might support them with
positive experiences. By focusing on fostering
positive experiences and ways to reflect on
those events, we engage in the important, but
sometimes overlooked, work of sweating the
small stuff.
Ultimately, in the experience of human beings
in the workplace, it's not always just about
our big organizational levers or strategic corporate policies-it's about how work gets
played out in a person's immediate work
environment from the time they walk in the
door in the morning until the time they walk
out the door at night. Leaders should sweat
the small stuff and watch how it positively
affects both human and organizational wellbeing in a big way.

References
There is a growing body of evidence showing that the
little things that happen to people during the day have
a significant effect on their health and wellbeing and
their ability to contribute effectively and creatively.

Bono, J., Glomb, T., Shen, W., Kim, E., Koch, A. (2013).
"Building positive resources: Effects of positive events and
positive reflections on work stress and health." Academy
of Management Journal, Volume 56, No. 6, pp. 1601-
1627.
Baumeister, R. & Leary, M. (1995). "The need to belong:
Desire for interpersonal attachmnets as a fundamental
human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117: 497-529.
Fredrickson, B. (1998). "What good are positive emotions?" Review of General Psychology, 2: 300-319.

work. In a natural way ask, 'why did this go
well?' If we ask why something went well it
gives us an opportunity to focus on an accomplishment, pay a compliment, and recognize a
positive difference that was made, even in a
small way. Ultimately, this leads to increaseed
overall health and wellbeing for employees. As
people become healthier, many benefits occur,
including a reduction in health care costs.

A Word of Caution
One should not assume that an organization
can habitually treat its employees poorly and
then hope to make things better by engaging
in a positive reflection exercise for 10 minutes
at the end of each day. If a company's overall
culture is one of treating its employees as
resources to be used up and then tries to
implement "positivity," it will be viewed as a
manipulative tactic. Supervisors should
"sweat the small stuff," but only in an authentic manner. They should only do this in the
context of genuinely caring about the welfare
of their employees, thinking every day about
how they can help employees accomplish
great things and celebrate with them in their
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PEOPLE & STRATEGY

creating a healthy workplace. Employees
treated as human beings are healthier and
more productive. This is better for them, for
your customers, and for your products.
Dr. Bono reminds us that "the core ideas are
a) little things that happen to you throughout
the work day (positive and negative) have a
serious impact on your health and well-being;
b) these behaviors might just happen, but
they can also be controlled by supervisors
and managers; and most importantly; c) by
focusing people's attention on the good things
you can enhance their natural benefits (that
is, good things increase health, but an explicit focus on good things further enhances
health). Thus, it is important in organizations
that people have positive experiences and that
there be opportunities to reflect on them."
HR professionals should consider including
this as a basic component of supervisory
training programs. Supervisors can consciously think of ways to provide balance to
overcome the natural evolutionary negative
bias. If we're focusing on the negative only,
then we're leaving opportunity on the table.
People come to work with hopes for what

Fredrickson, B. (2001). "The role of positive emotions in
positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of
positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56: 218-226.
Hobfol, S. (1989). "Conservation of resources: A new
attempt at conceptualizing stress." American Psychologist,
Volume 44, pp. 513-524.
Ryan, R. & Deci, E. (2000). Self-determination theory and
the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development,
and wellbeing. American Psychologist, 9: 1-28.
Ryff, C. & Singer, B. (1998). The contours of positive
human health. Psychological Inquiry, 9: 1-28.
Terkel, S. (1972). Working. New York: Pantheon.

People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1