Are You Thriving at Work?
It's no secret that our experiences at work play a big role in our mental health. Experts say that when employees are learning at work, they’re more likely to feel that their job positively impacts both their mental and physical health. This concept is known as "thriving," which means doing well in all aspects—mentally, physically, and socially.
Thriving at work happens when you feel energized and see yourself continuously improving. It's important because it helps you assess if your work is contributing to your personal growth. People who thrive at work show noticeable development and progress in their roles.
Recently, companies like Microsoft have shifted their focus from just measuring employee engagement to understanding how employees thrive. This broader approach helps businesses better support their employees’ success and well-being, especially in today’s hybrid work environment.
How to Thrive at Work
So, what helps us thrive at work? It’s not just about reducing stress and while there are events at work that you can’t control, according to experts like Spreitzer and her colleagues (2005), thriving at work comes from certain behaviors and resources that boost your energy and learning. Three key behaviors that drive thriving are:
Focusing on Tasks- Staying concentrated on your responsibilities.
Being Curious - Being open to taking risks and discovering new ideas.
Thoughtful Relating - Paying close attention to how you interact with others.
Thriving at work is having a sense that you’re continuously improving and learning and feeling energized by it. Thriving at work is shaped by the work context itself, and when you’re working on a global virtual team, it is worth additional focus and consideration because of the increased difficulty in task completion given the geographic distance, time separation, organizational differences, functional differences, cultural and language differences.
There’s a constellation of possibilities within each work setting. Individuals who experience thriving at work demonstrate noticeable growth and development because they’re able to gauge whether what they are doing and how they are doing it is helping them make progress in their self-development
References
1. Brown, D. J., Arnold, R., Fletcher, D., & Standage, M. (2017). Human Thriving A Conceptual Debate and Literature Review. European Psychologist, 22, 167–179.
2. Porath, C., Spreitzer, G., Gibson, C., & Garnett, F. G. (2011). Thriving at work: Toward its measurement, construct validation, and theoretical refinement. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(2), 250–275
3. Spreitzer, G., Sutcliffe, K., Dutton, J., Sonenshein, S., & Grant, A. M. (2005). A socially embedded model of thriving at work. Organization Science, 16(5), 537–549
4. Su, R., Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2014). The development and validation of the comprehensive inventory of thriving (cit) and the brief inventory of thriving (bit). Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 6(3), 251–279