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Is your business suffering from the scourge of negative news?
According to HR veteran, Chris Roebuck, the former global head of leadership and talent management at UBS (who is now an internationally-demanded leadership speaker and consultant), bad news isn’t just bad for the people it most directly impacts; it’s also bad for the wider business community too.
Chris Roebuck
Former Global Head of Leadership and Talent Management, UBS
His assertion – which is now beginning to be backed-up by scientific research – is that the constant cycle of negative global news we seem to be under is now having a big impact on motivation and performance.
In fact it’s so bad that Roebuck – who harks from a military background – likens its impact to being similar to the secondary traumatic stress that those on the frontlines experience.
He suggests that continuous exposure to negative global news and our ever-present crisis-driven media creates a unique cognitive load (specifically on the brain’s amygdala – part of the brain’s limbic system that detects threat), that lowers concentration, narrows thinking, reduces collaboration and even impacts the extent to which people take risky decisions.
In other words, all the elements that impact productivity are impacted.
So how true does this theory stack up? HR Grapevine recently spoke to Roebuck to hear his thoughts about this in more detail:
Q: Whenever we turn the TV on, the headlines keep telling us there’s more disruption, more chaos and more instability. Do you believe the external news agenda is now having a negative impact on the happiness and productivity of staff?
A: “Science is increasingly telling us that this concept is correct, and is no longer something that is just theory. It’s telling us that constant exposure to modern news media is having a corrosive and negative impact on employees. We know that when world events feel like they have their own momentum, and people feel powerless to be able to impact them, then motivation drops. So this is when external events start to interfere with the dynamics of work, and what employers are trying to achieve.”
Constant exposure to modern news media is having a corrosive and negative impact on employees
Q: Isn’t the problem that we can accept that these things probably do have an impact, but we don’t know how much?
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A: “I think that is at the crux of it. We know some people can completely switch off from- or are immune to world events, and they don’t let them impact their daily lives. In The Army, for instance, recruits are actually taught to be able to put things into boxes. But we also know this isn’t universal, and there’s evidence to suggest women are impacted by negative news more deeply than men. In my mind though, more leaders simply need to acknowledge that the problem of news overload exists, and leaders need to be able to say that they believe it’s impacting their people – from it causing a drop in enthusiasm or motivation or productivity.”
Q: Is there also something in the fact that leaders themselves are concerned about raising this as a contributing factor impacting productivity? Do they fear not being taken seriously if they suggest it’s ‘the news’?
A: “Yes, I think this is right. It’s not something people – including those in HR – often want to own up to. But I remember being at HSBC Investment Bank, as 9/11 was happening, and people were visibly shocked. One of the first things I did was get people together to talk about it, because there was a sense that something like this could affect people for the rest of their lives. Afterwards, I remember people telling me how grateful they were to have had these sessions, because people felt that only they were traumatised by it, when actually this trauma was being felt a lot more widely.”
