Supporting an employee: should help be visible?
When an employee is under pressure, a manager can explicitly offer help or quietly ease a work-related difficulty. The management question is specific: how can useful support be provided without reinforcing a sense of inadequacy?
What the literature establishes
Niall Bolger, Adam Zuckerman and Ronald C. Kessler (2000, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) studied couples in which one partner was preparing for the bar examination. Their observations distinguish support that partners report providing from support that recipients report receiving: help not reported by the recipient can nevertheless be associated with better emotional adjustment. Receiving support and being aware of being supported are therefore not equivalent experiences.
The possible cost of overly explicit help
Niall Bolger and David Amarel (2007, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) provided experimental evidence that the visibility of support can alter its effects on adjustment to stress. Their findings support the value of discreet forms of support in the situations studied. One proposed mechanism is that highly explicit help can also draw attention to the difficulty being faced or threaten the recipient's sense of competence.
The premature conclusion
It might follow that managers should always help without saying so; these studies do not justify that rule. Discreet help is neither an intervention behind an employee's back nor an invitation to conceal decisions affecting them. Within SHR's “Emotional Intelligence” programme, this distinction provides a useful focus: examining how support is received rather than judging its quality solely by the manager's intention. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence does not allow us to transfer
A study of couples and experimental findings are not sufficient to establish the effectiveness of a practice within a hierarchical relationship. At work, help may be interpreted as an evaluation signal, and some adjustments require explicit agreement. Nor does this research demonstrate that discreet support improves job performance or constitutes an emotional intelligence skill in its own right.
A practical check in Berne
In a Berne-based team working in federal administration, public health, telecommunications or precision manufacturing, SHR could propose observing the help provided during a busy period, without changing safety rules or responsibilities. For each instance recorded with the employee's agreement, confidentially collect two assessments: “This help was useful to me” and “This help respected my autonomy”, with the response options yes, partly or no. The indicator is the proportion of assessed instances receiving two “yes” responses, alongside the number of non-responses. This record would not prove the superiority of discreet support, but would help check whether assistance considered useful by its provider is also useful to its recipient. To go further: explore the Emotional Intelligence training in Bern in the canton of Bern, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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