Emotional attachment to work leads to improved health

A study by British researchers has found significantly higher well-being for employees in work groups with higher organisational commitment

Workers who feel emotionally attached to and identify with their work have better psychological well-being, according to a new study.

Efforts to increase affective organisational commitment (AOC) might lead to a happier, healthier workforce — and possibly contribute to reducing employee turnover, researchers said.

Affective organisational commitment is defined as "the employee's emotional attachment to identification with, and involvement in the organisation."

The study conducted by Thomas Clausen of the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Copenhagen, and colleagues, looked at how AOC affected psychological well-being and other health-related outcomes in approximately 5,000 Danish eldercare workers, organised into 300 work-groups.

The results showed significantly higher well-being for employees in work groups with higher AOC. Work groups with high AOC also had lower sickness absence rates and fewer sleep disturbances, as reported by workers.

The relationship between group-level AOC and psychological well-being was completely explained by individual-level AOC.

But group AOC contributed to the differences in sick days and sleep problems, independent of individual AOC.

Previous studies have suggested that employees' emotional attachment to and identification with their work is an important motivating factor that affects absenteeism and other key organisational outcomes.

The new study adds evidence that group-level AOC "is an important predictor of employee well-being in contemporary health care organisations."

Within work groups, high AOC may act like an “emotional contagion” — with “effects on individual-level well-being that are relatively independent of the level of AOC of the individual,” researchers said.

They suggest that strategies aimed at enhancing AOC might help to address the high rates of burnout and turnover among employees in healthcare and elder-care services.

The study was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.