David J Paul Project Management Professional, Management Professor, Author and Small Business Manager
For the first time ever published, the following information comes from a data collection I did from September 2012 through December 2014 in which I asked 1630 individuals from differing backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, and political affiliations about their experiences in feeling cared for at work. This is exactly what I have been writing about on these pages for over a year now. What’s new is that in this data collection, for the first time, I asked these individuals about their experiences with 20 different ethical constructs that they observed or participated in at work. This is in addition to the 15 top Caring Items and the 17 Engagement items which I normally ask about.
The remarkable conclusions (which really aren’t so remarkable, it’s just that we tend to ignore them) are that people who FEEL CARED FOR AT WORK are more likely to report fewer ethical issues for themselves and others at work. How did we show that? In a study, first reported RIGHT HERE, I computed the correlations between items of Caring and ethical constructs such as “How much Theft have you observed, How active are you in your company’s ethics program, How engaged are you in the company’s social responsibility program, and care for the environment” as well as a combination of all 20 ethics items
To test the validity of the results, I compared Caring items across four country groups represented in the 1630 individuals. Figure 1 shows Respect, Regard, and Reward differences among the four groups of individuals who reported being born in different countries. It is easy to see that there is a considerable variation among the elements of Regard felt at work. I then computed the ethical scores for each of the same four groups. Those are shown in Figure 2. It is also easy to see that there is a considerable and similar variation among the total ethical constructs for the four groups. These figures are presented merely to see and show that there is a variation, not to characterize the ethical behavior of one group or another. Figure 3 also shows a considerable variation in the element of work engagement called “Dedication”.
It was up to me to quantify the differences and to compute correlations between elements of Feeling Cared for at work to some meaningful elements of Ethical Behavior at work. Is Total Caring related to Total Ethical Behavior? Yes, the correlation coefficient (CORREL in Excel) is 0.732!!! People who feel cared for are likely to report POSITIVE ethical behaviors at work. How about some key ethical items like, are my people positively inclined to participate in the ethics program: Total Caring to Being engaged in Ethics Program: CORREL = 0.45 How about Total Caring to Social Responsibility? CORREL = 0.56. What about observed THEFT in the company? Caring is not strongly related CORREL = 0.309. However, for Social Responsibility, Caring is more strongly related at CORREL = 0.512. Do you get it? It pays–always pays–to have employees that feel cared for at work.
There is more work to be done, but preliminary results show that if you want to have higher levels of ethical behavior AT WORK, you are better off if you maintain an atmosphere of HIGH MUTUAL REGARD and CARING. Happy Thanksgiving to all of us!
The Cameron Group, Inc. 