1 Chapter 4 How’s the job? Are Trust and Social Capital Neglected Workplace Investments?

This chapter investigates trust and social capital as potentially beneficial yet neglected investments in the workplace. We define social capital as networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate co-operation within or among groups. We use subjective measures of life satisfaction to value the climate of trust in the workplace, set in the context of life as a whole. Using data from two separate Canadian surveys, and one large US survey, we find that the climate of trust in the workplace is strongly related to subjective well-being, even after allowing for individual personality differences. For example, results from one of the surveys suggests that moving one point on a 10-point scale of workplace trust affects life satisfaction about the same amount as a 40 % change in income. The size of these effects, often referred to as compensating differentials, suggest unrecognized opportunities for managers and employees to increase satisfaction and productivity by building better workplaces. Throughout the chapter, we examine the determinants of workplace trust and explore differences among sub-groups of workers. We also consider why such large unrecognized opportunities for improvin