{"id":27241,"date":"2021-10-23T00:46:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-23T00:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=27241"},"modified":"2021-10-24T11:50:53","modified_gmt":"2021-10-24T11:50:53","slug":"workers-feel-most-valued-when-their-managers-trust-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/workers-feel-most-valued-when-their-managers-trust-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Workers feel most valued when their managers trust them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jesus Arias<\/a>, Florida International University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Research Brief<\/a> is a short take about interesting academic work.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big idea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Professional workers are more likely to value their own work and feel it contributes to their team\u2019s success when their managers show they trust them, according to a study I recently completed as a part of my unpublished Ph.D. dissertation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to understand how various types of social capital<\/a>, such as building trust and creating common values, influence employees\u2019 performance and how they feel about their work. So I conducted a survey of 457 people I recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk<\/a> who have done work on at least one project for their employer. I then asked them a series of questions about the experience and their views on how it went. The survey attempted to measure perceived levels of participants\u2019 engagement when their manager used social capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 74% of the respondents said having a manager who fostered trust \u2013 for example, by soliciting opinions during meetings and encouraging them to share their knowledge with the team \u2013 made them feel positively about their own work. This was often more important than if their work was completed on time, on budget and satisfactorily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why it matters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Companies routinely fail to successfully complete projects. By that I don\u2019t mean they don\u2019t complete them, but they fail to finish the project on time, on budget or by some other measure of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it\u2019s estimated that over half of projects<\/a> \u2013 whether a merger, a public works project like a bridge or a sporting event like the Olympics \u2013 fail by one measure or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why figuring out what contributes to their success is so important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My research suggests the seeming lack of project success is in part because the main measuring sticks guiding how businesses think about it \u2013 time, cost and quality \u2013 may not be as important as fostering trust among the workers integral to making it work. This isn\u2019t to say the other measures aren\u2019t important, but my work suggests the use of social capital in a way that makes employees feel valued could be an overlooked component.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What still isn\u2019t known<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My study focused on worker perceptions, which I believe are valid and useful measures of a project\u2019s success. Further studies will be needed, however, to validate my findings and show they correlate with actual results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s next<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m hoping to investigate novel training methods that might help companies build and sustain trust in the workplace. My goal is to find strategies that businesses can use to foster more trust and thus increase worker productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.<\/em> Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus Arias<\/a>, Doctoral Student in Business Administration (D.B.A.), Florida International University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesus Arias, Florida International University The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Professional workers are more likely to value their own work and feel it contributes to their team\u2019s success when their managers show they trust them, according to a study I recently completed as a part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":27242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,277],"tags":[1838,5714,10700,2197,7727,4243,4424,1748,509,1753,10701],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27243,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27241\/revisions\/27243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}