David Holman

Professor

David's primary research interests are job design and job quality, as well as emotions and work. In particular he focuses on what makes a good and bad job - and why some people have one but not the other - and the effects of this on their health, wellbeing and performance.

"How we feel about our jobs is inevitably a very subjective experience and there are different ways in which we all look at it. For instance, it could be mainly about your pay, or it could be more about the benefits that you receive. Or it could be determined by the people you work for and the leadership of an organisation."

"What I am particularly interested in is the actual design of the jobs people do on a day-to-day basis. I am interested in the tasks they do, the difficulty of those tasks, their workload, and how much freedom they have to choose the tasks that they are performing. At the end of the day, it is the nature of those tasks that have a profound effect on wellbeing, stress, and one's whole view on work."

Intervention studies

David has carried out a number of intervention studies which have sought to develop ways of making jobs better. As he adds: "When you study interventions that take place managers often look at things like pay, reward practices and the role of a team leader. But they rarely focus on the actual nature of the job task itself."

In recent times David, who works within the Organisational Psychology group at Alliance Manchester Business School, has also been looking at the effects of the pandemic on the way we work, on our wellbeing, and on our work-life balance.

These were the very questions that were explored at a recent conference he co-organised which invited leading researchers to share their insights into these questions. A central message from all the speakers was that organisations and leaders can take positive steps to mitigate the impact of pandemic-induced changes by proactively redesigning work so that it better suits the needs of employees.

Pandemic impact

As he adds: "The pandemic has pushed health and wellbeing at work further into the public debate, and thus represents an opportunity to make positive changes in the workplace."

"Looking ahead, responsibility for coping with the impact of the pandemic should not rest on individual employees or their managers. Instead, action should be taken by organisations, trade unions, employer organisations and the state through, for example, improving training and development opportunities, regulations on working hours, the right to disconnect, and protection from unfair dismissal. COVID-19 has raised awareness of just how important working conditions are to our wellbeing."

Emotion at work

David's other main focus is emotion at work and emotion regulation, a research area that has become much more mainstream in recent years. This work focuses on the role of emotions in the workplace, and specifically how organisations seek to manage the emotions of employees.

As he explains: "There has historically been a suspicion about the role of emotions in the workplace amid perceptions that they are somehow contrary to success in the workplace and get in the way of making good decision-making and undermine productivity.

"However, the tide has turned and there is an increasing view that emotions can have a positive role to play in the workplace and that they are central to achieving most work-related goals, and shape our wellbeing and performance."

Interpersonal emotion regulation

One specific area of research is interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) which looks at whether it is possible to shape the feelings of other people around us in the workplace, for example by trying to improve a colleague's mood by helping them to reframe a work or personal problem, or by simply acknowledging the validity of the emotions they are experiencing.

With colleagues David has been building a research programme trying to explore its relevance to working life, looking at how and why people influence feelings of those around them on a daily basis, and the effects this has on their relationships and their performance.

Such behaviours may also be critical when employees are joining a new organisation, or if a leader of a new team needs to establish strong bonds with colleagues. "Ultimately it is not just about what managers do, but the reasons that underlie what they do that matters. They need to be authentic when using interpersonal behaviours otherwise their actions might backfire."