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Germans demand that workers be happy, invade Poland
On November 22, 2005 by Jamie Madigan
Alternative title for this post: "Ve Haf Vays of Making You Smile." According to this story on Fox News, a German company has instituted a policy requiring employees to not be grumpy while at work.
"We made the ban on moaning and grumpiness at work official after one female employee refused to subscribe to the company's philosophy of always smiling," office manager Thomas Kuwatsch told The Australian.
"She used to moan so much that other employees complained about her complaining. Once it was part of the contract, however, our employees really started to think positively," he told the paper.
"Mood is an important factor in productivity and everyone here works hard and is happy," Kuwatsch told The Australian.
It kind of reminds me of that one episode of the Twilight Zone where that kid with god powers could read anyone's mind and would do awful things if they thought unhappy thoughts. Except with more Germans.
Joking aside, attitude really is important and often relates to what researchers call "extra-role behaviors" or "organizational citizenship behaviors" or "contextual performance." Pretty much all the same thing, people just haven't settled on a name yet. I like "contextual performance" myself. One aspect of this is how pleasant a person is to work with and how well he/she gets along with co-workers.
Personality seems like a natural place to start if you want to test people on this kind of thing. Well, more natural than making them sign a contract agreeing to be happy. And indeed, there are relationships between certain personality variables and contextual performance.
Existing comments:
Posted by David at November 23, 2005 11:03 PM:
OCB's can also include "extra-role" behaviors, or discretionary effort. It is the things people do that aren't necessarily part of their job description but the stuff where they go "above-and-beyond" the normal duties of the job and display a"whatever it takes" attitude. I reviewed an interesting paper for SIOP a few weeks ago that suggested employee OCB's can also be viewed less altruistically in the form of impression management. Some employees confessed to engaging in public displays of extra-role behavior with the primary purpose of getting noticed as a team player and enhancing one's reputation and/or status within the company.
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