FRIDAY, April 8 (HealthDay News) -- Employees' moods at the start of the work day affect how they feel for the rest of their shift, according to researchers.

Their study of 29 telephone customer service representatives also found that workers' early mood is linked to perceptions of customers and how they react to customers' moods.

Mood also affects job performance, including how much work employees do and how well they do it, the researchers found.

"We saw that employees could get into these negative spirals where they started the day in a bad mood and just got worse over the course of the day," Steffanie Wilk, an associate professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, said in a university news release.

"That's why it is so important for companies to find ways to help their workers start off the day on the right foot," she added.

The study appears online and in a future print issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

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