The people we sit near at work impact us, for good or worse!!!

What’s more, our work neighbours can actually change how well we do our own jobs.

?Researchers looked at the 25-foot radius around high-performers at a large technology firm and found that these workers boosted performance in co-workers by 15 percent.?

?That “positive spill over” translated into an estimated $1 million in additional annual profits, according to new research from Dylan Minor a professor of managerial economics/decision sciences at the Kellogg School.

?Of course, the flip-side is that bad eggs impact their neighbours, too.?

?Negative spill over from toxic workers is even more pronounced—sometimes having 2x the effect on profits as positive spill over. Yet, while this toxic spill over happens very quickly, it also dissipates almost immediately once that worker is either fired or relegated to the far physical reaches of the company. (Oh, to have a stationary cupboard again) As the sales training guru @trevor pinder says "it's better to have a hole on your sales floor than an arse ]hole”)

?This means that companies potentially have a very cheap way to boost productivity—simply shift some people around—as opposed to relying on L&D alone.

?Minor says, in an era where companies are experimenting with open floor plans and other non-traditional seating arrangements, the stakes can be high. Minor’s research provides tangible takeaways for leaders thinking about how to arrange their staff pods.?

?How does physical proximity impact spill over?

?It’s not however, a simple linear issue. People are not uniformly just good or bad at their jobs; many excel in some areas and are average or below average in others.?

?“In today’s world, most of the jobs we do are very much multidimensional,” Minor says. “We’re not just putting widgets together one piece at a time.”

?So, what did physical proximity do when employees’ work was approached in a multidimensional way??

?To explore this, Minor and Housman got two years’ worth of detailed information on the performance of more than 2,000 workers at the tech firm.?

?They picked two measures of performance—speed and quality—and gave workers a ranking of either high or low for each.

?They also defined toxic workers the same way as in their previous research, as anyone whose behaviour was so bad they were eventually exited. (FYI the study showed it to be about 2% of the workers studied.)

?Then the researchers literally mapped out where each employee sat and analysed how each person’s work shifted over time as their neighbours changed.

?Positive Spill Over

?First the good news.

?Having a high-performing neighbour is a bonus for everyone. Employees who ranked high on either speed or quality boosted the performance of those within a 25-foot radius.

?The impact was particularly strong on those who were matched with someone who had a complementary skill. In other words, if Dave is rated high for speed and Sarah is rated low, Sarah’s speed will improve when he sits near Dave, more so than if they were both already speedy workers. The same holds true for quality.

?And, crucially, Dave's speed will not be dragged down by his slower-moving neighbour.

?“The beautiful part of it is that when we put these people together, they’re not going to materially suffer on the area of strength,”?

?Minor says. “They’re only going to improve on their area of weakness.” This idea of matching people with complementary strengths makes sense when the skill in question is something that has a finite upper limit, like speed, Minor explains.?

?But for other skills, like creativity, where there is no true upper limit, it might make sense to pair people with the same strengths so that their positive spill over keeps nudging the other to do more and more creative work.

Negative Spill Over

Now the bad news.

Toxic workers are really, really toxic. And they infect their neighbours very quickly.

?“Once a toxic person shows up next to you, your risk of becoming toxic yourself has gone up,”?

?Minor says. And while positive spill over was limited to about a 25-foot radius, with toxic workers, “you can see their imprint and negative effect across an entire floor.”

?Keep in mind how narrowly the researchers defined toxic—someone who will be fired for their behaviour.?

?This means that simply sitting near someone who gets fired means you yourself are now more likely to commit an act heinous enough to merit firing. (I think we could all agree there are similarities with lazy and disengaged employees- poor performance is catchy).

?And this toxic spill over happens almost immediately. The researchers saw neighbours go bad, so to speak as soon as that toxic neighbour showed up. Whereas positive spill over that boosted speed or quality generally took a month to impact a lower-performing neighbour.

?Q) Why is negative spill over so much more powerful than positive??

?Minor believes it is line with many other psychological studies that show that, “negative effects have more of a magnitude than positive effects.” For example, losing $100 is more painful than winning $100 is joyful.

?But even among the toxic, there is reason to be reassured, Minor says. “Once they’re transferred or fired, your risk pretty much immediately subsides.” Plus, he adds, “most people are not toxic.”

?Learning vs. Peer Pressure

?Next the researchers explored why spill over happens. Are people learning good or bad behaviour from their neighbours or is something like peer pressure at work?

?They reasoned that if employees were learning from those nearby, then the positive or negative effects would continue after their influential neighbour left. But the data showed that both positive and negative spill over were fleeting. The importance of having enough good eggs is obvious!

?Spatial Management Matters

?The researchers’ findings provide some tangible advice for managers.

?In addition to measuring spill over, Minor was interested to find that, at least among the hourly workers he studied, there really was no such thing as a worker who is highly skilled in everything.

?“There’s not really that quote unquote superstar,” he says. “It’s more a story of finding different specialists in a way that you can pair them together.”

?He advises leaders to think about what strengths they want in their employees and then narrow that down to the two or three most important ones. Then leaders should decide whether to pair people with similar or complementary skills near each other, based on whether the skills have an upper limit, like speed, or do not, like creativity.

?“You can actually measure a lot of this stuff and be pretty scientific about putting together an optimal spatial management of the organization,” Minor says.

?Yet much of the changes in office layouts have not been done scientifically. Minor is working with the same firm now to look at the pros and cons of open floor plans. Other offices are experimenting with different non-traditional seating, he says, like “nomad workers,” where people have no fixed desks and just roam around.

?“Architects are trying all kinds of crazy stuff,” Minor says. “There are all kinds of theories behind it, but so little research.”

?This is not new though, I for one would often sit rookies next to internal experts, the powerhouse work machine to learn about effort and cadence, the lyrical gangster who could dance through every challenging call and of course the positive ray of sunshine who makes everyone noticeably happier, so they see the benchmark and take in some of their magic!?

?Think about your office?

• Your cliques?
• Your good eggs
• And exit the bad eggs regardless of their contribution?

?