This paper provides evidence from a natural experiment on the relationship between positive affect and productivity. We link highly detailed administrative data on the behaviors and performance of all telesales workers at a large telecommunications company with survey reports of employee happiness that we collected on a weekly basis. We use variation in worker mood arising from visual exposure to weather-the interaction between call center architecture and outdoor weather conditions - to provide a quasi-experimental test of the effect of happiness on productivity. We find evidence of a positive impact on sales performance, which is driven by changes in labor productivity-largely through workers converting more calls into sales and to a lesser extent by making more calls per hour and adhering more closely to their schedule. We find no evidence in our setting of effects on measures of high-frequency labor supply such as attendance and break-taking.

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1 March 2024

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Management Science 70(3) , pp.1656-1679, 2024

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DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2023.4766

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4766

This Journal article is published under the centre's Community Wellbeing programme, Labour programme.

This publication comes under the following theme: Work and wellbeing