A spoonful of fair process helps the medicine go down
This article by Perspectiv’s Andy Wilkins and Chris Unsworth, Strategy Manager from National Grid ESO, is about trust and how using ‘fair process’ appropriately or inappropriately can build or damage trust, which in turn influences engagement. Trust is like oxygen: vital for humans and sometimes, like oxygen, we only notice it when it goes missing.
One aspect we have noticed from 25 years of research and application is that one of the main ways we can help build trust and a healthy climate is by using processes fairly. Likewise, if the principles of fair process are absent, it causes a lot of damage.
THE WHAT – fair process
Trust and engagement matter more than ever because turbulence means organisations, teams, and projects are dependent on the engagement, motivation, and commitment of employees.
Trust and engagement cannot be magically conferred on people, but it is possible to understand, apply, and develop the principles of fair process to help people build trust and engagement.
The main insight about fair process is that people will commit to a decision and be more engaged – even one they do not agree with – if they believe the process that was used to arrive at the decision was fair.
On the surface, this sounds both remarkable and pretty straightforward, but most people and most organisations are neither aware of fair process and/or do not use processes fairly.
SO WHAT – building or losing trust and engagement
Management theory focuses on outcomes but this frame of mind does not get the best from people and needs to be re-imagined. Research shows people care up to 4 x more about the process through which an outcome was achieved than the outcome itself!
This seemingly unusual and irrational behaviour is because people are complex or as the young boy Michael Banks in Mary Poppins says on meeting Mary, “she’s tricky”. Complex sometimes means that an approach does not align with the accepted wisdom of the time and situation, in a similar way that Mary Poppins’ approach does not align with the wider conventions of the period nor the Banks household. A more recent example is when Ted Lasso first meets the press when he, Ted, and his approach does not accord with the customs of a typical Football Manager.
Traditional economics, management, and business education focuses on achievement, accomplishment, outcome. We ask ourselves after the event; does this outcome/decision make sense? Is the outcome fair given the context? Does it seem logical and rational? This addresses what is known as ‘rational’ commitment and compliance.
On the other hand, a process that is seen as fair builds ‘emotional’ commitment and discretionary effort and focuses on the approach used to produce the result. We ask ourselves after any event; was the process by which the outcome was achieved fair? Who and how was the outcome achieved? How was the process determined?
Emotional commitment (to the process) is 4 x more powerful than rational commitment (to the outcome).
Using a process fairly links to a global human value – the need for fairness. People’s justice perceptions of a fair process are determined by similar principles across cultures.
Engagement is the employee’s attitudinal attachment to their job, company and decisions; intention to act in the company’s best interest; and willingness to invest discretionary effort to achieve goals.
Highly engaged people perform 20% better and are 87% less likely to leave. Engagement is tightly connected to trust and in particular direct managers. Not using a fair process damages trust and engagement and results in people being fearful of being rejected, punished, or embarrassed.
Using fair process helps build trust where people feel able to show and project themselves without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career.
Organisations, teams, projects, and managers seeking to build the resilience, energy, engagement, creative problem solving, agile capabilities, collaboration, and trust of people is more likely when fair process is used.
NOW WHAT – transparency and the 3 principles fair process
Whilst the process-oriented state of mind is not always reinforced or supported in our cultures, to perform at our best, it is the process of execution that actually delivers the outcome. If you think about it, we have more influence on how we approach a task than we do on the outcome. The following are the three principles for applying a process fairly which can be summarised as being more transparent.
Provide more transparency by…
Engaging people by involving them in the decisions that affect them by asking for their input and allowing them to refute the merits of one another’s ideas and assumptions – especially those of management.
Explaining to people involved and affected why and how final decisions are made as they are. This does not mean they necessarily agree with the decision (outcome), but they do understand the ‘process’ that was used as well as the logic, reasoning, and criteria that the decision is based on.
Expecting to provide clarity on the new rules of the game once a decision is made.
A few concluding aspects to notice and reflect on about fair process are that:
Most people think of themselves as fair but most muddle fair process with fair outcome
Fair process is not about consensus or workplace democracy
Fair process does not mean managers forfeit their legitimacy to make decisions
Fair process is about treating people fairly with what they need to be effective
Fairness is a global human value, but is also a professional skill that needs developing.
Ultimately, the only truly binding forces to build trust and engagement are good faith, integrity, and morality. And if all that fails, foxholes are quite handy.
References
Thibaut, Walker, La Tour, Houlden: Procedural Justice as Fairness, 1974.
Lind and Tyler: The Origins and Consequences of Procedural Fairness, 1988.
Kim and Mauborgne: Fair process: managing in the knowledge economy, 1997.
Morris and Leung: Justice for all? Progress in research on cultural variation in the psychology of distributive and procedural justice, 1999.
Ekvall and Ryhammer: The creative climate: Its determinants and effects at a Swedish university. Creativity Research Journal, 1999.
Corporate Leadership Council: Driving Performance and Retention through Employee Engagement, 2004.
O’Boyle and Harter: State of the global workplace: Employee engagement insights for business leaders worldwide, 2013.
Vinarski-Peretz and Carmel: Linking care felt to engagement in innovative behaviors in the workplace: The mediating role of psychological conditions. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2011.
Isaksen and Akkermans: Creative climate: A leadership lever for innovation. Journal of Creative Behavior, 2011.