You may not love your job, but mostly, days are at least tolerable. But an OK day at the office can get much worse when you have a colleague who won’t stop complaining about how bad it is.

They grumble about how their holiday wasn’t approved, how bored they are, how much they hate thei...

There’s evidence to suggest that certain attitudes and behaviours can spread from one person to a group of people quite easily, especially in work contexts: for example, employees are more likely to engage in immoral acts, like lying or stealing, if they work alongside others who commit such ...

Emotional contagion occurs when we, as social creatures, recognise emotions in others and subconsciously mimic them. For example, when we see a coworker in a bad mood after a meeting, it tells us that something did not go right in the meeting.

Emotional contagion is mo...

There’s a range of effects on teams in which negativity is spreading. At best, workers’ satisfaction with their role, team or company could dip; at worst, unhappy workers could end up looking for jobs elsewhere in a mass-quitting phenomenon known as turnover contagion.

Experts also say a crucial thing to keep in mind is if people are unhappy in your team, it’s often a much bigger problem than one disgruntled worker. It might not be one bad apple – it might be bad organisational practices.

For example, workplaces pressuring people to ...