In a context of employment insecurity, how can employee trust and satisfaction be maintained?
An employee’s trust helps preserve their psychological contract with their employer, while job insecurity is one of the elements that can break it.
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This initiative was made possible through a collaboration with the Université de Sherbrooke and is supported by the Chief Scientist of Québec, with the Fonds de recherche du Québec.
Legende : doctoral student’s recommendations
doctorants
Marie-Pier Boivin is a PhD candidate in organizational psychology (PhD R/I) at the Université de Sherbrooke. Her thesis focuses on individuals’ functioning at work as a component of workplace psychological health.
What Is Meant by…?
These definitions were adapted by our PhD student from those in the scientific article.
Job insecurity
Concerns about the future of your job.
Job satisfaction
How content you are with your job.
Trust
The feeling of being able to take risks in a relationship, because you believe that the other party wants what is best for you and will be careful with what you share with them.
Employees can place their trust in one or more co-workers, one or more supervisors and in the organization.
Psychological contract
An informal and implicit agreement (that is, one that is not written or legally binding) between an employee and their employer.
- The employee’s expectations towards the organization (e.g.: getting a promotion every 5 years);
- The organization’s expectations towards the employee (e.g.: helping to integrate new employees by acting as a mentor);
- What the employee is prepared to do for the organization (e.g.: work overtime to complete a project on time);
- What the organization is prepared to do for the employee (e.g.: provide development opportunities).
What Are the Study’s Findings?
1. When job insecurity increases, employees trust their employer less.
Employees perceive job insecurity as a breach of one of the clauses of the psychological contract. Once the contract is undermined, the employee might question the trust that they place in their organization. This contract breach makes them question the organization’s desire to take care of them.
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