Athletes say they hate to lose more than they love to win. New research finds the same sentiment is shared in organizations.
A Virginia Tech researcher and his colleagues discovered that when managers frame work problems as a potential loss, employees are more likely to take action than when those problems are framed as potential gains. The research also revealed that when the potential loss impacts a larger group, employees are more likely to take action in the form of speaking up to a supervisor in hopes of finding a solution. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
For managers, this research suggests that framing work problems as potential losses can influence employees to speak up more.
“Employee voice occurs when suggestions are made to improve organizational functioning,” said Phil Thompson , associate professor in the Pamplin College of Business Department of Management . “From an organizational perspective, the positive outcomes of employee voice include improved performance, effectiveness, and workplace safety. From an employee level, speaking up is positively related to creativity, innovation, engagement, and ethical behavior.”
At its core, this research shows that how managers choose to frame problems directly influences employees’ motivation to speak up at work. For managers, this is an insightful approach for building more open and collaborative teams.
“When managers say, ‘If we don’t get this done, not only will you lose the $5,000 bonus, but everybody in this work group is going to lose a $5,000 bonus,’ it magnifies an employee's motivation to act in a proactive way,” said Thompson. “This suggests that framing work problems as what will be collectively lost - compared to what can be individually lost - makes employees want to speak up more.”
Thompson was part of a research team led by Jeffery Thomas and Jonathan Booth from The London School of Economics and Mark Bolino from Oklahoma University. Together they analyzed responses from nearly 2,000 full-time employees, MBA students, and employee-supervisor pairs for their experience in situations where work problems were framed as either a gain or a loss. Across three different studies, framing something as a loss yielded employees to voice a work suggestion more.
For example, a manager dealing with a reputational crisis of their team, such as a product quality issue, can frame the problem in a way to spark helpful employee suggestions on how to resolve the issue. For example, instead of saying “if this product has great quality, our company will look really good” a manager saying “if this product is not up to quality standards, our reputation will be damaged” carries more weight for the team. When this reputational risk is shared by everyone, employees are more willing to step forward to help the problem.
In the first study, participants were asked to think about a problem at work that was significant for them. From there, they were randomly assigned to write about the potential losses or gains from that problem. They were also asked to indicate how likely they were to talk about these problems to their supervisor. Participants who reflected on their potential losses showed a 16 percent higher willingness to speak up compared to those who focused on the potential gains.
When it came to the MBA students, they read a fictional performance review scenario where a workplace problem was described. They then rated how willing they would be to speak up about that scenario if they were in the situation. One example suggested that the entire team might fall short of its goals if an issue was not addressed. This specific scenario yielded the most likelihood of speaking up 35 percent more than the scenario’s suggesting that only they would miss their goal, supporting the research’s findings that an employee is more likely to speak up when the loss impacts more people.
The third study looked at employee-supervisor pairings to understand how these relationships play out in the real world. Using pairings from across three industries, employees reported a workplace problem they encountered and their supervisor rated how often that employee spoke up on the job. While the first two studies involved hypothetical scenarios, this real-world evidence showed that employees were 8-10 times more likely to speak up when issues were framed as a potential collective loss compared with a potential collective gain.
“This research is really geared toward managers so they can facilitate and understand how and why their employees will speak up,” said Thompson. “You can talk about the issue, but it always ends in terms of how we frame things.”
Original study : DOI 10.1037/apl0001372
Journal of Applied Psychology
When (Collective) Losses Loom Larger Than Voice Pains: The Effect of Loss Framing on Willingness to Speak up at Work