Waking Up on the Right or Wrong Side of the Bed: Start-of-Workday Mood, Work Events, Employee Affect, and Performance

Abstract

We examine how start-of-workday mood serves as an “affective prime” that relates to how employees see work events, how they feel subsequent to events, and how this felt affect relates to objective performance. Using experience sampling and both archival and coded performance, we tested these relationships in a call center. We found that start-of-workday mood relates to employee perceptions of customer affective display and employee affect subsequent to events (i.e., calls). Positive affect subsequent to events relates to coded performance quality, whereas negative affect subsequent to events relates to productivity. We find evidence that affect subsequent to events is a mediator.