Summary of the CIPD research report
Something seems to be happening to the state of the psychological contract. The CIPD research report, Employee Well-Being and the Psychological Contract, highlights areas that many HR professionals, as strategic business partners, will want to be thinking about. So the wealth of material contained in this survey is invaluable to HR professionals.
At the CIPD, we've been undertaking annual surveys into employee attitudes since 1996. This report is based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,000 people in employment in Great Britain.
The psychological contract is built on the three pillars of:
- fairness
- trust
- delivery of the deal between organisations and employees.
And research has shown that a positive psychological contract is the best guarantee of good performance outcomes.
Analysis of the causes and consequences of the psychological contract
This research report outlines the state of the psychological contract on the main dimensions of trust, satisfaction and commitment. Findings suggest that organisations are now more successful in delivering on their promises than they were in earlier years. But there are real issues in relation to employees’ feelings of fairness and trust, levels of which have been decreasing over the last two years or more.
The survey concentrated on four distinctive themes – the concept of the good employer, effective supervisory leadership, the high-quality workplace and the link to work-related stress, and contemporary career preferences.
The concept of the good employer
A cluster of practices are associated with the concept of the good employer. These include the presence of a range of progressive HR practices, the adoption of flexible family-friendly practices, effective supervisory leadership and the delivery of promises leading to perceptions of fair treatment and high levels of trust.
The composite measure of the good employer is strongly associated with higher levels of worker satisfaction, commitment and excitement at work, as well as higher levels of motivation, positive behaviour at work and a lower intention to leave the job. The findings therefore confirm that engaging in good employment practices brings benefits not only to workers but to the organisation as well.
Effective supervisory leadership
One of the biggest challenges for HR is to support line managers in their role of managing and developing people. Line managers have emerged from earlier surveys of employee attitudes as the ‘good guys’. Employees have reported feeling significantly more trust in them than in senior managers or in the organisation as a whole. The picture that emerges this year is less positive. A majority of line managers seem to be failing in many or most of the basic elements of good management – including providing regular feedback or offering to help improve individuals’ employment.
The high quality workplace and stress
Stress has been moving steadily up the workplace agenda in recent years and the survey asked a number of questions about possible sources of stress. These questions were designed jointly with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The survey shows that on a number of dimensions respondents are reporting stress levels that exceed those incorporated in the HSE standards on stress management.
The survey provided a preliminary measure of six criteria identified by the HSE as likely to be associated with lower levels of stress at work.
Contemporary career preferences
There has been much debate about what's happening to careers. The survey identified three distinct groups of employees in terms of their attitude towards their career:
- Traditional – working longer hours than most, displaying high commitment and motivation. These people wanted long-term tenure in one organisation and upward mobility, and tended to be younger workers.
- Disengaged – work is not a central life interest, and they want no emotional ties to the organisation. These employees tend to be older, long-tenure, low-income workers, displaying low levels of motivation and a reluctance to do anything extra.
- Independent – low commitment and satisfaction. They want career success, but on their own terms and without being tied to any one organisation. They tend to be graduates on high incomes and with a short tenure. They report lower organisation commitment, lower satisfaction, a poorer psychological contract and a higher intention to quit.
GUEST, D and CONWAY, N. (2004) Employee well-being and the psychological contract. Research report. London: CIPD.
This report is now out of print, but copies are available for loan to CIPD members from our Library.
Please see the research projects area of our site for details of our other reports on the Psychological Contract.