Psychological Wellbeing and the Psychological Contract

Rob Briner (Professor of Organizational Psychology): Psychological wellbeing is quite an interesting term because it has only really come into play I would say in the last 20 or 30 years or so in the workplace.

Previously, people used to talk about things like job satisfaction or job stress or, more recently, employee engagement. And I think psychological wellbeing is more the kind of umbrella term that refers to all those things and more... essentially it refers to how people feel going from just ordinary everyday moods and emotions right through, I guess, towards clinical conditions like depression. So, I think it is really best thought of as an umbrella term for a range of feelings that people might experience at work.

Managers, I think, should care about psychological wellbeing at work, I mean, for all kinds of reasons. One I think is an ethical reason. I think managers and organizations have a responsibility to look after the wellbeing of their employees, both in law and, I think, morally as well.

So I think that’s one reason they should care. I think the other reason they should care is because certainly, it is the case that... there is some evidence that how people feel at work affects their performance.

Now, these links are not obvious but they are there. The better evidence does suggest to us some links, particularly around performance, such as going the extra mile or what people sometimes call "organizational citizenship behavior," which is where people go out of their way to actually help other people and help the organization. So there are links between how people feel and those kinds of behaviors, certainly.

So I think both are practical moral reasons. There is good evidence I think to pay attention to... yes.

I think, if you are trying to think about how psychological wellbeing is affected by organizations and managers, I think one of the most useful concepts is the psychological contract, and essentially what that means is the implicit agreement between employers and their employees which says, "This is the kind of real deal that if you do this stuff we will give you this good stuff in return." And, for me, one of the most telling things when psychological wellbeing is either going up or enhanced or is going wrong or declining in some way, is that there is something wrong with that contract.

Most typically what organizations do, either deliberately or accidentally, is they break promises. They imply to individuals, for example, that if they work hard, they keep their nose clean, they do the right kind of thing, then in return they, for example, will get promoted and get a pay rise. Now, if that does not materialize, the individual may feel that that deal has been broken in some way. They may feel angry, they may withdraw effort, and so on.

So I think, for managers in particular, understanding what the people they manage want, and what they want to give, and what they want in return is a very important basis for thinking about how employees feel and what managers can do to shape that.

For managers to try and manage the psychological contract – and this is not easy, I am not saying it is an easy thing to do – but, I think what they need to do is really try and understand better what they, as an individual manager, and what the organization can give and what their team members can give back in return. And that requires really paying a lot of attention to what people are doing and also talking to them, and this is something managers typically often want to avoid for all kinds of reasons. But, actually trying to understand each person they work with as an individual, because the other really striking thing about the psychological contract is often people want quite different things. They want to give different things at work and they want to get different things back. And I think, for a manager, the more they can understand that, the more they will be able to manage that deal and, I think, the more that they will be able to manage the wellbeing of their employees.

If the psychological wellbeing of employees gets really significantly eroded at work, I think you are moving there probably into clinical psychology territory, where people may be depressed or have actual clinical sort of conditions.

But moving perhaps a bit above that, as it were, to just sort of normal everyday very negative feelings, I think the main things that can happen are around withdrawal of effort. I think what individuals do when they feel unhappy is they don’t want to try anymore, they think, "Why should I bother trying?" So that’s one key, I guess, performance issue. 

The other thing, if people are particularly angry, for example, and I think it is important to talk about specific feelings here not just general psychological wellbeing. If people are angry they may be thinking about retribution, getting their own back, redressing the balance in some way.

So I think when we are considering the impact of reduced psychological wellbeing, we have to think about specific emotions and specific feelings because they will be different and have different kinds of effects. So, again, it is really back on the manager in a way to watch this and understand how the people they are managing are actually reacting to things and what that means for their behavior.

I think, if you are a manager right now who wants to try and understand more about the psychological wellbeing of the people they are working with and the people they manage, I think this sounds a bit odd, but I think the first thing is to actually think about how you are feeling yourself.

I think a lot of managers are clearly under pressure to do things, they are under pressure from the people that manage them, and often the way they are being individually managed obviously has trickle-down effects in the way they manage other people. So I think understanding how you, as a manager, are actually feeling about yourself, your work, the organization, is a very important starting point because the chances are if you feel upset or happy or excited or whatever by different things, so do the people you are working with. So I think that’s the first start.

I think the second thing you can do is actually, through conversations with people, talking to them about what they want to get out of work, the things they aspire to do, where they see themselves in a few months or a year’s time, whether they are happy, whether they want other things to be happening at work for them... I think that’s another very important way of understanding feelings.

Generally saying to people, "How are you feeling?" isn’t a great way of finding out how people are feeling. I think if you say to people, "What do you want? What are you getting? What are you not getting that you think you might want?" I think is a much better way of getting in and tapping how people are feeling about the work they do and the organization they work in.

About Professor Rob Briner

Rob Briner is a Professor of Organizational Psychology at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London. To learn more about him, see his biography here.