Past research has confirmed that negative interactions at work hurt employees’ well-being and productivity, but the time spent at work is only one part of an employee’s day. The authors’ recent research affirms that conflicts at home also negatively affect our energy and emotions throughout the workday and also shows that many employees react to their bad home experiences in a surprising way: by offering help to their colleagues. This research points to ways that employees can cope with negative experiences that spill over to work — and also how managers can support their employees who may be dealing with home stress at work.
It’s well established that negative interactions at work hurt employees’ well-being and productivity: Research has shown the draining effects of incivility at work, and the emotional reactions we have to feeling mistreated by others. However, the time spent at work is only one part of an employee’s day.
Our recent research, just published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, affirms what many of us may have suspected: That conflicts at home also negatively affect our energy and emotions throughout the workday. But we also found that many employees reacted to their bad home experiences in a surprising way: by offering help to their colleagues. This research points to ways that employees can cope with negative experiences that spill over to work — and also how managers can support their employees who may be dealing with home stress at work.
In an initial study, we set out to understand fundamentally what types of incivility employees experienced from their partners, and how those interactions made them feel. We randomly assigned 226 employees to recall a recent civil or uncivil pre-work interaction with their partner. (Of those we spoke to, slightly less than half identified as women; nearly 80% were married with another 16% in another form of long-term relationship. Just under 15% identified as LBGTQ+. Participants held a wide range of roles across industries.)
The uncivil interactions that they described ranged from arguments that lingered the night before into the morning, to ignoring each other over breakfast, or snapping at their partner over everyday issues. As we expected, we found that after they recalled these events, those assigned to remember uncivil interactions felt more depleted and in a worse mood than those who assigned to contemplate more civil interactions. Lingering recall of incivility from a loved one, it seems, can alter our energy levels and the way we feel long after.
How Partner Incivility Affects Us at Work
So how does that affect an employee’s behavior at work? To find out, we asked 111 dual-income couples to complete regular surveys for two weeks. In each couple we designated one the employee whom we would track during the workday. (Again in this study our employees held a wide range of jobs across industries. They largely identified as women but controlling for gender did not affect our conclusions.)
Each morning before work, the employees’ partners reported whether they had instigated incivility that morning toward the focal employees. We asked the partners, not the tracked employees, because we wanted to make sure to catch situations in which the partner intended rudeness — by not talking, for example — that the focal employee might not even notice.
Then the employees reported their energy levels and emotions at the end of the workday, as well as their emotional state in the evening. Finally, to learn how their experiences and feelings affected their work interactions, we also asked the employees how much they helped their coworkers on their work tasks or with personal problems.
We thought it possible that the employees would pull back from helping their colleagues, since they were already drained from difficult interactions at home — some earlier research (including our own) pointed in this direction. But our study revealed the opposite: Employees who had experienced incivility from their partners and were in a bad mood as a result were also more likely to say that they helped their colleagues with both work-related tasks and personal problems during work that day. What’s more, in a survey the focal employees filled out later that evening in which we assessed their emotions at home, our results suggested that helping others with personal problems actually led to these employees returning home in a better mood as well.
Why were these employees more likely to help others, and why did it help them? From previous research, we know that helping others develops positive relationships, builds our feelings of competence, and leads to more positive reflections about our workday. We believe that, consciously or unconsciously, people still stinging from their partner’s incivility seek out opportunities for those more positive experiences.
What Companies, Managers, and Employees Can Do
First, if you’re a professional who has experienced partner incivility at home before work, know that helping others — especially supporting them through their own personal concerns — can help you cope with your own, and leave you in a better mood by the time you return home. It can also help you build relationships that can support you in the longer term.
(But if you’re looking for that boost, be cautious: Our study also showed that employees who helped their colleagues with task-related problems rather than with personal problems returned home in a worse mood. This may be because these tasks often distract employees from their own work goals without providing opportunities to build relationships.)
Second, try seeing the uncivil interaction from another point of view. In the second study we described, we found that employees who tended to reframe negative interactions from the other person’s perspective essentially obviated their negative effects at work. This makes sense: Because incivility can be ambiguous, it’s not always clear that the instigator meant the slight. This kind of perspective taking can help people see their partners’ incivility in a more positive light.
Organizations and managers also have a role to play to support employees through difficult experiences they are having at home. Managers can create a positive environment that encourages employees to detach from home stressors while at work, much as home can be a space for employees to recover from workplace incivility. And while our studies focused on those experiencing only minor instances of rude behavior, we believe they would benefit from the same cultural supports that have been shown to help those experiencing much more severe mistreatment at home, such as creating supportive climates where employees help each other and model positive social relationships.
To be clear, incivility is fundamentally bad for its targets’ well-being. We are not suggesting that someone’s rudeness toward their partner can be excused just because these coping mechanisms exist. These approaches aren’t going to repair a relationship, even if they make someone feel better for the day. We also aren’t suggesting that organizations should manufacture “helping” tasks for those burdened by their partner’s rudeness as a way to lighten their moods. Instead, we see our findings as a reminder to managers and leaders that their people have lives beyond their jobs that can affect their work, and that supporting the whole employee is important — as well as a hopeful window into how humans naturally cope with relationship challenges.
As the boundaries between employees’ work and home lives become more blurred than ever in the era of remote and hybrid work, the spillover of emotions from one realm to the other is only likely to be exacerbated. But by using what we learn about how employees can cope with those emotions — and by having organizations and managers who support them as they do so — we can minimize their ill effects.