Factors Associated with Employees\u27 Trust and Confidence in their Supervisors: Case of Department of Health and Human Services

Background: Trust and confidence in managers are a critical component of employees’ engagement and their ability to contribute to the organization\u27s success. Hence, it is crucial to understand the significance of the role of trust and confidence by the employees’ satisfaction, demographics, and unit level work environment. Purpose: The FEVS, administered by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), contains questions designed to measure employees\u27 feelings and attitudes in topic areas such as leadership, management/supervision, and other areas critical to creating an effective work environment. Given the importance of the role of supervisors, this study seeks to answer whether there is a variation in trust and confidence in supervisors based on 1) the employees’ unit level work, 2) employee satisfaction, and 3) employee demographics in the Department of Health and Human Services. Methods: The study used a quantitative approach that analyzed a secondary data set from the Federal Employee Viewpoint survey. An ordinal logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the relationship between trust and confidence by employees in their managers in the Department of Health and Human Services. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 27. Results: The results revealed a positive correlation between trust in supervisor and unit level work environment and a similar correlation between trust in supervisor and employee satisfaction. Most importantly, the data indicate variations among the respondents when it comes to expressing trust in senior leadership throughout the various questions. Conclusion: The research data show variations in the research data when it comes to expressing trust in senior leadership among the various categories of the three independent variables. Respondents with less than a BA degree and BA degree are less likely to express satisfaction with senior leadership than respondents with an academic degree beyond the BA level. Minority respondents were less likely to express satisfaction with senior leadership than their non-minority counterparts. Non-supervisor respondents were more likely to express satisfaction with senior leadership than their supervisory counterparts