Psychosocial risks: is saying thank you enough when decisions seem unfair?
A team may receive regular thanks while questioning how burdens and benefits are allocated. The management question is specific: can greater verbal recognition be enough when decisions are still perceived as unfair?
What the literature establishes
Johannes Siegrist (1996, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology) presents the effort–reward imbalance model and examines evidence linking this imbalance to health. Rewards extend beyond pay to include esteem, career prospects and status security. Equating recognition with expressions of thanks therefore captures only part of the model.
Fairness in decision-making is another dimension
Marko Elovainio, Mika Kivimäki and Jussi Vahtera (2002, American Journal of Public Health) report associations between low organizational justice and adverse health indicators among Finnish hospital employees. Their study distinguishes, in particular, procedural justice from fairness in interpersonal treatment. It encourages attention not only to what people receive, but also to how decisions are made and how people are treated.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that explaining decisions more clearly or thanking people more often is sufficient. Yet these studies do not demonstrate that more considerate communication compensates for inadequate rewards or an unfair procedure. For managers, the challenge is to distinguish a failure of explanation from a flawed rule: making a decision understandable does not necessarily make it fair. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot settle
The two articles provide different types of evidence: the first develops a model supported by empirical findings, while the second examines associations in a specific occupational setting. They are not trials demonstrating the effectiveness of a recognition ritual, nor do they justify directly transferring their findings to every occupation in Valais. In practice, a stand-alone satisfaction indicator cannot distinguish the effects of rewards, procedures and relationships either.
A practical check in Sion
As part of SHR’s « Risques psychosociaux » programme, a proposed exercise in Sion is to examine a single category of decisions: assigning on-call duties in hydropower, shifts in healthcare, harvesting tasks in viticulture or duty coverage in alpine tourism. Over four weeks, record the proportion of these decisions for which an allocation criterion was communicated before the decision and an opportunity for review was indicated. Then test an explicit rule and repeat the same measurement for another four weeks, without recording individual health data. Changes in this proportion verify a decision-making practice, not a reduction in psychosocial risks; collective feedback on how the rule is applied remains necessary. To go further: explore the Psychosocial Risks training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Psychosocial Risks in Sion
- psychosocial risks
- Sion
- research
- training sion