How Brain Science Can Help You Engage and Retain Workers

You don’t have to be a neuroscientist to understand that how you feel impacts your work.

Brain imaging studies continue to reveal new insights on how the feel-good brain chemicals impact how our bodies function physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Today’s job designs need to start tapping into the role these feel-good hormones play at work.

Activating people’s happy brain chemicals is essential to promoting successful performance. Happy brain chemicals work together every second of our workday to regulate our moods, perceptions, and our view on work and life. 

Job designs and work environments that activate these chemicals will deliver healthier, happier workers. The design of most jobs today is based on simple job descriptions that document the responsibilities expected from the worker.

We have known from decades of research that this is not enough.

All humans have three basic psychological needs related to self-determination that most jobs fail to properly address. These are the need for relatedness, competence, and autonomy.

These needs underpin human growth and development, yet we continue to do a poor job of factoring them into job design.

Our jobs should activate the brain chemicals associated with happy feelings such as mood, concentration, memory, trust, learning, pleasure, and appreciation.

Here are three brain chemicals you must factor into your job designs.

#1: Oxytocin - The Purpose and Trust Chemical

Oxytocin flows when people feel their jobs have purpose and meaning. Oxytocin is associated with human social behaviors and is about work being an adventure. In the work setting it is released when the organizational culture provides employees a sense of trust and relatedness.

This in part is why oxytocin is known as the love hormone. It is produced during aspects of building relationships and social bonding.

Research has shown that when someone feels purpose, trust, and a sense of cooperation the brain produces oxytocin.

Elevated levels of oxytocin cause people to work harder to help the group achieve its goals. Oxytocin stimulates the desire to commit to those you “trust,” which creates a feeling of safety and comfort. It helps the body adapt to different emotional and social situations.

Most importantly, the more one feels trusted by others, the more the brain releases oxytocin. Trust also improves the alignment of the organization to its purpose.

Teams that promote oxytocin release are more productive, innovative and find more enjoyment in their work. The fact is that with a potent oxytocin stimulus, people will perform at higher levels, and work feels less like work.

Key Takeaway: In oxytocin rich environments there is trust and purpose between colleagues, everyone believes that their work is meaningful, and they work with purpose.

READ: Five Ways to Build Your Industry 4.0 Workforce

#2: Serotonin – The Memory, Learning and Growth Enabler

Serotonin, like other brain chemicals, acts as a hormone. Serotonin carries chemical messages between nerve cells in your brain and throughout your body that tell your body how to work.

Serotonin is known as the “confidence” neurochemical, and it is important to have healthy levels in your body as you work because it provides confidence and peace of mind for people in tackling challenges and pursuing their goals with sharper focus and increased determination.

When serotonin levels spike, people feel secure, calm, creative and capable. Serotonin’s roles goes beyond influencing self-confidence. It promotes mindfulness, learning, memory, happiness, and good sleep for those night shift workers.

Serotonin rewards you with a good feeling when you feel significant, important, or when you feel you are excelling and growing. It drives the pleasure you feel when you experience social power, loyalty, or status. It activates the region of the brain that supports the acceptance of oneself and is a natural mood booster and stabilizer.

About 90 percent of serotonin is made in the digestive tract and must be obtained by the foods you eat. This is because it is an essential amino acid and cannot be produced by your body. Serotonin is one of the feel-good brain chemicals (along with endorphins) that is most influenced by corporate health and wellness programs.

Key Takeaway: It is important that organizations invest thoughtfully to encourage employees to keep their serotonin and endorphin levels in good form through diet and exercise.

READ: Tackling Europe's Manufacturing Labor Shortage

#3: Dopamine – The Reward Chemical

Dopamine is associated with the brain's reward center and is released when a work experience is enjoyable.

The role it plays in the workplace is crucial to reward motivation and driving the behaviors of human reward-seekers in seeking pleasure.

Its job is to encourage us to act either to achieve something good or avoid something bad.

When your brain anticipates that something important is about to happen, it causes the level of dopamine to spike and motivation increases.

Activities such as interacting with colleagues, helping others, and experiencing the pride of accomplishing meaningful work create a dopamine rich environment.

When you complete a task, achieve a goal, or express creativity, the pleasurable release of dopamine in the reward center of the brain tells you that you have done an excellent job. Dopamine plays a significant role in the science of motivation and our unique human ability to think and plan.

It also enhances the power to learn and produces a surge of positive reinforcing pleasure when people pursue work that gives them a sense of achievement. This is especially true when people are using their strengths to perform tasks that they want to complete.

Dopamine flows when people feel they perform tasks well and brain power increases as people become more engaged resulting in better judgement and problem solving.

Conversely, when we experience a dopamine deficiency at work it promotes procrastination, low self-esteem, a lack of motivation and impacts the ability to focus.

Performing work that gives you a rush of dopamine is important because when people fail to receive spikes of dopamine from their work they drift and look to other places where they can easily satisfy the need.

This explains why we see people turning to quick and easy rushes in their dopamine levels by wanting to feel the excitement of someone “liking” a post on social media. When jobs fail to produce dopamine, it creates disruption in daily work routines that prevent people from achieving flow in their work.

Key Takeaway: When work and job designs kick dopamine into high gear, the human brain will do the rest to promote finding work interesting in ways that boost engagement and productivity levels.

READ: Lessons From the NFL to Improve Employee Learning and Development

Happy Brain Chemicals Promote Flow

There is nothing more personal to the human condition than what is going on with the various brain chemicals of an individual at any single point in time.

Chemical imbalance or balance is a result of a person’s own thought and actions to their environment. Chemical imbalance in the brain causes mood disorder, emotional distress, and disturbances.

Work consumes one third of our lives. Imagine if it factored in brain chemistry to promote a balanced release of healthy brain chemicals throughout each day.

Activating healthy brain chemicals is an effective and inexpensive way to motivate employees, raise morale and to get more flow, focus, productivity, and happiness out of employees.

Feel-good brain chemicals are part of our biology, they fuel intrinsic motivation and enable the attainment of flow in a person’s work.

When happy brain chemicals are triggered at work a mental state of flow occurs creating the intersection of optimal being and optimal doing.

When people enter a state of flow, they become profoundly absorbed in the task they are performing. Their concentration becomes so completely engaged that there is no cognitive bandwidth left for attention to anything else as the person feels one with the activity.

Seeking ways to promote the release of performance-enhancing neurochemicals throughout the workday will grow. Especially as research continues to reinforce the link between happiness and performance.

Work should indeed be an extraordinary adventure. Businesses benefit when work creates happier, motivated, and more engaged employees.

Interested in learning more? 

If you want to optimize the performance of your people and drastically improve productivity across your operations, then you must attend the Connected Worker Summit.

Taking place November 15-17 in Chicago, the program has been designed to help you understand how to leverage connected worker technologies to improve operational efficiency, training, asset management, quality and safety.  Download the agenda for more information.