Morning mood affects you throughout the day

Washington: The mood of employees when they report for work affects how they feel the rest of the day, besides clearly impacting their performance.

The results of a study showed that when employees started the day in a good mood, they tended to rate customers more positively through the day and also felt more positive themselves.

"We saw that employees could get into these negative spirals where they started the day in a bad mood and just got worse over the course of the day," said Steffanie Wilk, associate professor of management at Ohio State University.

"That's why it is so important for companies to find ways to help their workers start off the day on the right foot," Wilk said, reports the Academy of Management Journal.

Wilk conducted the study with Nancy Rothbard of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, according to a university statement.

The study involved a group of customer service representatives who handled phone calls made by customers to a large US insurance company.

Over three weeks, the participants filled out measures of their mood at the beginning of the workday and two other random times during each day.

At those two other points in the day, they also indicated how their latest customer seemed to them, such as whether they were rude, calm, insulting or cheerful.

"Starting off at work wearing rose-coloured glasses - or grey glasses - shapes the way we perceive events the rest of the day," Wilk said.

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