What makes workers feel engaged? The quest to answer this riddle is becoming increasingly important for organizations, because employee engagement is linked to work performance: Engaged employees tend to be more productive. Moreover, workplace engagement is an important determinant for the level of commitment and loyalty that employees show toward their respective organizations. Executives must understand what motivates employees to excel in their jobs to reduce the risk of “brain drain” and, ultimately, to create sustainable organizational success.
One of the crucial prerequisites for workforce well-being is that employees feel they can trust their line managers. Trust in decision-making authorities fundamentally shapes employees’ expectations about how they will be treated in the future — in terms of both what the authorities are likely to do and how they will execute their decisions. The more trust employees have in their managers, the more likely the employees are to expect organizational outcomes to be favorable and the more likely they are to expect that the procedures used by authorities to plan and implement decisions will be fair.