Home > Essay examples > Fulfill Belonging and Love Needs for Mental Health and Job Performance | Cockshaw et al. (2014) and Shakespeare-Finch and Daley (2017)

Essay: Fulfill Belonging and Love Needs for Mental Health and Job Performance | Cockshaw et al. (2014) and Shakespeare-Finch and Daley (2017)

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  • Published: 23 March 2023*
  • Last Modified: 22 July 2024
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  • Words: 1,214 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 5 (approx)
  • Tags: Essays on mental health

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Mental health wellbeing. Belongingness has been defined in several definitions, however, the central theme of belongingness is the relational value of one’s perception in others’ perceived thinking (as cited in Cockshaw, Shochet, & Obst, 2014). In recent years, the sense of being valued by others has been linked to depression. Therefore, Cockshaw, Shochet, and Obst (2014) conducted cross-lagged longitudinal research on belongingness and depression in general and workplace. Since depressive symptoms was presumably affected by others’ perception or the sense of relating to others and being valued by others, this study was aimed to explore longitudinal relationships between depressive symptoms and two types of belongingness, which are general and workplace belongingness. As for the findings, Cockchaw et al. (2014) observed that reduced belongingness accelerates the increment in depressive symptoms which then influence long-term belongingness cognitions. Besides, both general and workplace belongingness were found to be predicted depressive symptoms. With this said, employee’s mental health well-being was associated with the belongingness in their workplace as well as their personal life. Having a good interpersonal relationship and sense of belongingness could actually help the employees to have better psychological well-being.
Furthermore, a past study was conducted to explore the prediction of belongingness on psychological distress and resilience (Shakespeare-Finch & Daley, 2017). The purpose of this study is to determine workplace belongingness as a predictor of well-being by measuring the psychological distress and resilience, it hypothesised workplace belongingness will predict psychological distress negatively, whereas it will positively predict resilience. Subsequently, workplace belongingness was found to be significantly associated with the reduction of distress levels and increment of resilience levels. Shakespeare-Finch and Daley (2017) suggested that workplace belongingness acts as a social buffer between organisational stressors and well-being, while it is also linked to the reduction of depressive symptoms and increment of psychological well-being. Thus, fulfilling employee’s belonging and love needs, such as increase the workplace belongingness and fostering good interpersonal relationship, can help employee to cope with their stress and also be more flexible during work.

Job Performance. Besides, the lack of belongingness might lead to loneliness, as loneliness is defined as feelings of isolation and sadness that occurs when intimate and social needs are not met properly. Loneliness has been found to have a negative impact on an individual’s emotions, cognition, attitude and behaviour (as cited in Ozcelik and Barsade, 2018). People have an inborn desire to form social connections and build personal commitments with others. Therefore, when these social connections and commitments do not meet an individual’s expectations, a state of loneliness occurs which affects the individual’s well-being and functioning. Thus, according to the research carried out by Ozcelik and Barsade (2018), a significant relationship was found between workplace loneliness and low job performance. Employees who experienced loneliness in the workplace were less emotionally invested in their work which affected their commitment to the organization and their quality of work as well. For example, employees that exhibited those qualities were seen to take on fewer additional duties, have more absences in work and a higher turnover rate. They also have a higher tendency to put in less effort in their work and be less efficient.
Previous studies on human behaviour found that it is a human need to connect with others socially (Green, Gino, & Staats, 2017). Co-workers in an organization can be a key source of motivation which will lead to an increase in work performance. This is because affirmation from co-workers can strengthen an individual’s sense of belongingness which is known to be an important driver of human behaviour. Building connections and healthy relationships with colleagues have shown to improve the perspective of the importance of their work and also increase the positive motivation of workers. Furthermore, it was found that Maslow’s theory could be somehow applied in the workplace, such that individuals have to achieve the low-levels in order to move on to the next level. A study carried out by Adiele and Abraham (2013) in River State has shown that the poor achievement of low-level needs: physiological, safety, and belonging and love needs, will frustrate the achievement of high-level needs, which are esteem and self-actualisation needs. The authors also mentioned that teachers will not be putting their best efforts in their job until their basic needs are satisfied, as they could not fulfil the low-level needs along with lowering their productivity during work.
Nevertheless, Lambrou, Kontodimopoulos, and Niakas (2010) conducted a study to investigate the effect of specific motivation factors, which are physiological and safety needs, social needs, self-actualisation needs, and esteem needs, on medical and nursing staff, as well as the association between job satisfaction and motivation. As for findings, every motivational factor has a moderate correlation with job satisfaction. However, the self-actualisation needs were ranked as the first, followed by physiological and safety needs, social needs, and lastly esteem needs. It indicated that the staffs do not prioritise social needs as the vital needs to achieve while working. They are more likely to put self-actualisation as the most important needs, whereby physiological and safety needs as second in their job.
In summary, although employee might not view belonging and love needs as the most important needs among all needs during work, it could not be denied that belonging and love needs should be taken care of in the workplace. As workplace belongingness could actually foster better employee engagement which will affect employees’ job performance overall. According to Markos and Sridevi (2010), organisational performance could be predicted by employee engagement indicating the two-way relationship between employer and employee, whereas an engaged worker is aware of business context and improve job performance for the advantages of their organisation. This is because an engaged worker is highly attached to their organisation and highly contribute to their job. In this way, fulfilling employees’ belonging and love needs could indirectly lead to better organisational performance as well as employees’ performance. Beside the fact that employee engagement will affect their job performance, it has been shown that employee will perform better when they are reported high scores on psychological well-being (Wright & Cropanzano, 2000; Wright, Cropanzano, & Bonett, 2007). Both studies have shown that psychological well-being was related to job performance ratings. It indicates that happy employees usually have better performance, while happiness should be considered as psychological well-being. Besides, psychological well-being was shown to be a predictor of job performance. Therefore, fostering the sense of belongingness in the workplace as well as fulfilling their belonging and love needs could actually enhance not only employees’ psychological well-being and engagement to their job as well, but employees’ mental health well-being and engage could also improve their job performance too.
Thus, organisations are recommended to foster workplace belongingness for the employees to achieve their belonging and love needs which leads to better job performance. Besides, low-level of needs (physiological, safety, belonging and love needs) should be fulfilled before achieving esteem and self-actualisation needs. Moreover, it is suggested that an organisation should promote workplace policies that foster a sense of belongingness, as individuals who are in the role of management and supervision should acknowledge and positively reinforce the efforts of employees, which could promote workplace belongingness in the work environment. Thus, an employer should be aware of the workplace belongingness and employees’ needs in order to take care of employees’ mental health which will affect their job performance.

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