Wellbeing surveys: should a positive mood become a target?
A wellbeing survey can unintentionally become an instruction about how employees ought to feel. The managerial question is specific: how can organisations monitor wellbeing without turning reported satisfaction into an obligation to deliver?
What the literature establishes
Iris B. Mauss, Maya Tamir, Craig L. Anderson and Nicole S. Savino (2011, Emotion) show that placing a high value on happiness can, under certain conditions, have a paradoxical effect. In their experiment, encouraging participants to value happiness reduced positive emotions in response to a happy film, but not a sad one. Disappointment with one's own emotional state helps explain this effect: the expectation of happiness can become a standard that experience fails to meet.
Accepting an emotion rather than achieving a state
Brett Q. Ford, Phoebe Lam, Oliver P. John and Iris B. Mauss (2018, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) examine acceptance of negative thoughts and emotions through laboratory research, a daily diary study and longitudinal follow-up. Their findings link habitual acceptance to less negative emotional responding to stressful events and better subsequent psychological health. The observed benefit is therefore not simply a matter of experiencing more positive emotions.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that satisfaction surveys or wellbeing initiatives should be abandoned. These studies do not establish that: they concern how people relate to emotions, not the effectiveness of corporate surveys. The useful distinction is between improving working conditions and asking, even implicitly, everyone to experience the expected emotional outcome. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot establish
These studies assess neither emotional intelligence training nor a management policy in a Zurich company. They do not establish that a satisfaction target necessarily causes distress or distorts responses. Accepting an emotion does not mean accepting the conditions that produce it either: excessive workload remains an organisational problem.
A practical check in Zurich
Within SHR's Emotional Intelligence programme, a proposed exercise for managers in financial services, insurance, tech and the European headquarters of international groups in Zurich is to audit discussions of the next survey's results. For each team, record whether the discussion leads to a specific change in working conditions, with an owner and a follow-up date, or merely an invitation to be more positive. Then calculate the proportion of feedback discussions containing at least one organisational action documented in this way, and check progress on the agreed date. This indicator does not measure emotional intelligence; it checks whether listening to emotions leads to something other than an expectation of good cheer. To go further: explore the Emotional Intelligence training in Zurich in the canton of Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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