People who thrive in life are people who
experience higher levels of vitality, of health and who are continuously
learning and developing.
The members of the Thriving Organizations and Societies Lab here at Telfer,
are committed not only to helping organizations achieve
higher levels of productivity and profitability but also in finding ways
that would help them, giving more importance to the issues
of inclusion and diversity, to support ethical business practices
and finally, to foster greater thriving amongst their employees
both at work and beyond.
Myself and other colleagues here at Telfer
have embarked on a 5 year research project
that aims to identify how organizations can create work climates
that lend themselves to more easily talking about mental health, in the workplace
so that support can be more easily received.
What we're hoping to accomplish with this project
is to helping managers reduce the degree to which mental illness is stigmatized
My colleagues and I are interested in looking at how
we can teach people or help people become better team members.
This is an increasingly important as work in teams becomes more complex.
We've got work teams that are collaborating virtually
and often multiculturally
What we found is that the process of engaging and feedback
helps people learn how to better perform in teams.
One interesting finding of our research is that
everybody gains equally so it doesn't really matter
if you are an effective team member to start or if you are a poor performer
everybody gains by engaging and feedback in the process
and we've looked at this up to 6 times
and up to 6 times there have been increasing gains.
Professor Ahmed Ben Ayed's research focuses on how service encounters
at work, for example the experiences of customer service representatives
can hinder or harm the degree to which they can thrive.
He found that toxic service encounters triggered negative social emotions
for example, employees subjected to toxic service encounters
experienced more self-conscious emotions.
He also found that service agents with high levels of emotional attachment
to their organization are significantly more vulnerable to toxic service encounters
as they tend to interpret that kind of negative feedback toward their organization
as a negative feedback toward themselves.
This is problematic because organizations should find ways that
foster organizational commitment.
This is one of the hallmarks of thriving.
Overall, the members of our Thriving Lab are committed
to helping to improve the conditions in the workplace
to enjoy a more thriving life.