What will our job performance be like on a rainy day? And another sunny one? How does the weather affect the context of work?
These and other questions have recently been addressed by researchers at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, who have carried out a study investigating the effects of daily morning weather on how people feel while at work .
Morning weather
The study , published in the journal Applied Psychology , specifically examined people’s energy levels, job satisfaction, burnout, and stress on a daily basis in relation to morning weather.
To conduct the study, employees were asked to complete two surveys daily during all work days: one in the morning before starting work and one after work.
Subsequently, they developed what is known as a pictorial scale , which is essentially a diagram in which different intervals or phenomena are represented by illustrations that are generally used to summarize weather forecasts (i.e. a sun, a sun partially obscured by a cloud , a cloud with rain, etc.).
115 employees participated in their study, completing the surveys they had prepared for a total of 457 days. Interestingly, the data they collected suggested that morning weather was only related to positive states of well-being and not negative states . In other words, the researchers found that the better the weather was in the morning, the more employees felt energized and satisfied with their work. On the contrary, when the weather was bad, people felt more fatigued and dissatisfied. On the other hand, the more negative indicators of well-being, such as exhaustion and stress, seemed unaffected by the weather .