Workers who feel ostracized at work are less productive, study shows

Workplace ostracism—the perception of being ignored or excluded by colleagues or supervisors—affects 71% of workers. Extensive evidence shows it contributes to poor job performance and reduces creativity. A new study in Scientific Reports offers a novel explanation for why workplace ostracism is so pernicious: Feeling shunned or left out by coworkers disrupts a worker’s ability to monitor progress, control emotions, and engage in other goal-setting behaviors. The authors surveyed nearly 500 service sector workers in India to collect data on workplace ostracism, employee engagement, and job performance. The results confirmed previous studies showing that such exclusion hurts job performance and that employee engagement, generally speaking, improves it. However, the data also showed that ostracism is equally damaging to the job performance of highly engaged workers as it is to disengaged workers, suggesting that even dedicated employees are not immune to its effects. This may be because being shunned by coworkers directly interferes with “self-regulatory” processes like goal setting, emotional control, and attention regulation, which are key to performing under stress, the authors a…