Here is an interesting study. In a paper published last November, economists John Helliwell and Haifang Huang looked at the value of non-financial aspects of jobs. The paper is entitled How´s the job? Well-being and social capital in the workplace and can be downloaded from the following site: http://www.econ.ubc.ca/helliwell//papers/NBERw11759.pdf.
The study used various statistical techniques on survey data to look at the relative importance in terms of job satisfaction and life satisfaction (´compensating differentials´) of different aspects of jobs. They found that "workplace trust is by far the strongest determinant of job satisfaction." Indeed, workplace trust was found to be a greater determinant of job satisfaction than income, the ability to make a lot of decisions on one´s own, the level of skill required by the job, the variety of tasks, having enough time to get the job done, and being free of conflicting job demands.
The study is interesting in a number of ways.
First, it is always interesting when different disciplines look at the same problem. It forces us to think about what we are doing. Secondly, it is a result that fits well with some well-established approaches in HR.
From a methodological point of view, the study tackles the issue of identifying the drivers of employee satisfaction in ways that are different than would be typical in HR. The Helliwell and Huang study follows very much from an econometric approach rather than a psychometric approach.
1. Helliwell and Huang used census survey data, whereas in HR we would likely be working with employee survey data.
2. Consistent with an econometric approach, Helliwell and Huang use single questions to represent variables in the model whereas psychometric approaches tend to go for multi-item measures. Employee surveys, being derived from the psychometric tradition, tend to use multi-item indices of satisfaction, engagement, etc. As well, psychometric approaches are more likely to think in terms of underlying constructs ("latent traits").
3. Econometric and sociometric approaches focus on job satisfaction whereas much of HR has moved to other constructs such as employee engagement or employee commitment.
But that is what makes the study interesting from an HR point of view.
Workplace trust has been a focus of attention for some time now. For instance, way back in 1983, in the original work by Robert Levering that first identified the ´100 Best Places to Work For in the US," it is found that ´trust´ played a big part in what it means to be a ´great place to work.´ Indeed, three out of the five dimensions are understood to be subsets of ´trust:´ Credibility, Respect, and Fairness.
As well, workplace trust is also a key aspect of Cohen and Prusak´s social capital framework elaborated in their 2001 book In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work (Harvard Business School Press, 2001). Cohen and Prusak have a differentiated approach to trust, distinguishing between ´individual´ trust and ´organizational´ trust, between ´thin´ trust and ´thick´ trust. They introduce the idea of ´cascading´ trust, where people roll over their trust on the basis of recommendations of people that they know personally.
The surveys used by Helliwell and Huang did not tap the same aspects of trust:. Two of the surveys asked about ´trust in people you work with´ whereas the third looked at ´trust in management.´ Anyone who has conducted employee surveys knows that these two aspects of trust can be quite different.
All in all, Helliwell and Huang´s findings may speak to the strength and robustness of linking workplace trust and job satisfaction and other organizational outcomes. The idea being that the fundamental relation between workplace trust and job satisfaction is strong enough that it come up even across different approaches and methodologies-indeed across two disciplines.
