Move your desk beside the star and you’ll shine too

If you want to do better at work, sit by the office swot.

A study has found that just being close to good workers can improve performance – to the extent that clever seating plans could raise a company’s productivity by 15 per cent.

If diligent working is contagious, however, so is the reverse. ‘‘Toxic’’ employees drag down all their neighbours, and it is better to sack them before the rot sets in.

A lot of research has been carried out into the effects of office culture on productivity, but less has been done at the level of individual employees.

Economists from Harvard Business School wanted to investigate similar effects at the micro-level, examining how individual employees affect each other. For their study they were given access to the seating plans and individual employee performances of more than 2,000 employees from an unnamed technology company.

For each employee they were able to measure productivity, based on how long they took to complete a task, quality, based on satisfaction ratings from their clients, and effectiveness, which was judged by looking at how often they had to ask for help.

They found that good attributes rubbed off on nearby colleagues, especially if they were good in complementary areas.

Putting someone who was highly productive but produced average work beside someone who did less work but of a higher quality led to improvements in both.

The quality of the fast worker’s output increased, as did the speed of their new neighbour.

Dylan Minor, the lead author on the paper, wanted to see why that would be, whether they were learning from each other or just inspired by each other. When he split the pairs up their performance reverted to normal, implying that it was not that they had gained skills, but simply that they were inspired by each other. This effect also explained the reverse outcome, when really bad employees brought everyone else down.

‘‘The negative performance of these workers spills over to fellow workers,’’ Professor Minor said.

‘‘The bad news is that negative spillover effects happen almost immediately.

‘‘The good news is that the effects vanish within a month of no longer being exposed to the toxic worker.’’

Good news for the company that is, if not the employment security of toxic workers.

New Labour leader Jacinda Ardern suddenly has a 50/50 chance of becoming our youngest post-war prime minister.

Given her momentum it’s probably even higher than that. I gave former leader Andrew Little no chance. Neither did any of his MPs in their many private moments of honesty.

Yet in one short, dramatic and potentially career-defining week Ardern has taken Labour from dead man walking, to astonishing fresh young things dancing.

Yet not much has changed policy wise. Labour has effectively announced two new taxes: a petrol tax to build a light rail system in a decade and a water levy to nail farmers and business, with the aim of cleaning up our rivers.

It’s a levy no-one knows anything about. It deserves more scrutiny and that will come.

There is much more to discuss about the merits or lack of in both these policies. Yet it’s clear also that Labour is showing no mercy to the Greens with their policy mix. They are furious with the Greens and their poorly executed welfare debate.

If they crush the Greens before the Greens crucify themselves Labour will be a contented bunch. So Labour is desperate for their DJ leader to keep the music pumping. And so far there’s no ‘off’ button.

So far Ardern has not put a foot wrong. She comes across as positive, fresh, new, happy and keen on progress – not personality assassinations and nastiness. She’s been nothing short of a revelation.

Her smartest move has been to say she won’t attack Bill English on his sloppy handling of the Todd Barclay affair. That’s smart. And English looks like he’s hiding something.

English is prone to off days – he can not afford to have too many over the next 45 days.

She doesn’t need to attack the PM anyway. Winston Peters is the hitman on this, leaving Ardern to muse with the country about a better, positive future. The pressure will come though. National will somehow try and make her look too young and inexperienced during the campaign and surely their chance will come in the TV debates. Good luck, polls suggest the voting public don’t see her age as an issue.

I’ve debated and crossexamined Ardern before in these TV type debates – she’s enormously competent. National will do well to not underestimate her. She may end up being a tricky, smiling target.

I’ve also lost count of the number of people over the past week who have told me they’re going to vote for Labour this election.

Admittedly none of my weeklong survey of dairy owners, students, teachers, cabbies and office workers had any scientific basis – but when I asked them why, they came back with two words: Jacinda Ardern.