Mixed emotions can make work more difficult for pregnant employees

Emotional ambivalence – the simultaneous experience of positive and negative feelings at work – may undermine employees navigating complex work situations. Dave Arena Jr. , Phoenix Chen , Allie Gabriel and Kristen Jones find that among pregnant women this leads to lower confidence and higher turnover. But it can be prevented by different forms of interpersonal support.

For the past several decades, management research has been building an understanding of employees’ experience of “emotional ambivalence”, which is defined as the simultaneous experience of positive and negative feelings, at work. Findings generally suggest that emotional ambivalence can be a superpower that helps employees generate creative ideas, develop critical thinking skills and take proactive steps to address workplace challenges and opportunities, even during stressful times.^[1]

But is ambivalence always a good thing? Scholars are starting to consider whether context matters in determining whether emotional ambivalence consistently translates into positive work-relevant outcomes. In the face of complicated situations, can ambivalence still empower employees to respond effectively?

Our new research tests this question exactly by studying whether context matters for the experience of emotional ambivalence at work. We ask whether emotional ambivalence generates the same benefits for employees in constrained workplace contexts , which are characterised by reduced autonomy, limited discretion and fewer available avenues to effectively resolve conflicting feelings.^[2]

Recent findings on emotional ambivalence and working while pregnant

One of the most constrained contexts tends to occur for women who are working while pregnant. Marked as one of the most liminal experiences for working women, pregnancy represents a constrained context in which women are navigating an inevitable identity shift while continuing to fulfill work demands. With more and more women working well into their third trimester , pregnant women make up a substantial portion of the international workforce.^[3]

Pregnancy provides a strong opportunity for evaluating emotional ambivalence as the push and pull of work and pregnancy may drive competing emotional experiences . For example, a pregnant employee may feel anxious about stepping away from work during their upcoming maternity leave or proud of their work on a recently submitted deliverable while managing morning sickness, yet still angry that a client asked them if they were quitting after their baby was born to focus on being a mother.^[4]

We collected data from 279 pregnant employees across 2,408 workdays to get a sense of the different types of emotional experiences occurring in a constrained work context and the outcomes of those experiences. Contrary to generally assumed benefits of ambivalence, pregnant employees who experienced the highest emotional ambivalence reported the worst outcomes – lower confidence in their ability to perform, lower progress on their work goals and a stronger intention to leave the workforce after giving birth.

Those who fared the best generally reported emotional experiences that were not ambivalent but where characterised by mostly positive emotions like vigor and pride. These women tended to report the highest levels of efficacy toward their work and toward balancing their work with pregnancy-related demands. Importantly for organisational bottom lines, these women reported lower intentions to leave their organisations, greater intentions to return to work postpartum and an overall stronger progress toward their work-related goals.

Based on this work, the experience of emotional ambivalence at work appears to be more beneficial to work productivity and employee retention in contexts wherein employees have the bandwidth and discretion to resolve the tension created by mixed emotions.

How to manage emotional ambivalence at work

For pregnant employees, emotional ambivalence leads to significant work-related consequences as they navigate work and pregnancy tasks amid emotional whirlwinds. This implies that women who have the resources to regulate emotions in a manner that maximises positive and minimises negative states tend to have the most generative workplace experiences.

What does this mean for managers?

Managers themselves will, inevitably, face difficult times as they navigate their own professional and personal life transitions. And they will also be tasked with supporting subordinates navigating personal challenges. What can this research teach them?

First, managers should recognise that understanding the contextual resources employees may or may not have as they experience complicated emotions is essential to building empathy and responding effectively to their needs. Reading beneath the surface will be crucial for managers who want to support their workers. Second we consistently find that support from others at work shapes whether employees report mixed emotions.

Creating a culture where emotions can be expressed, and coworkers look out for one another, may be more important than ever during times of transition. Finally, to insulate employees during times of duress, we advocate bending (within reason) the structure of work. These might include flexible scheduling, open conversations about offloading tasks or honest conversations about workload allocation during difficult periods.

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