What psychological contracts do employees hold about health and safety?

It is important to understand what employees expect from organizations to support their health and safety during a pandemic. One issue is clear: simply adhering to legal requirements is likely to be insufficient in some cases and/or contested in others. Thus, although federal, state, and local authorities have issued a variety of pandemic-related guidelines and legal responsibilities for employers toward creating safe work environments for employees, especially those at higher risk of infection, there is also considerable complexity to these guidelines. They are issued from numerous agencies, may only apply subsets of employees (e.g., equal employment opportunity laws) or in certain conditions, and often vary based on workplace geographical location. Together, there is significant confusion about employers’ explicit health and safety obligations in a pandemic. Moreover, it is sometimes impossible for guidelines to keep pace with frequent changes and developments.

Importantly, psychological contracts for workplace safety often involve meeting obligations that go beyond legal compliance (Rousseau, Reference Rousseau1998). Indeed, beliefs about employers’ obligations may misalign with litigated requirements, stemming in part from the complicated nature of the rules but also from individual differences, such as real or perceived vulnerability to the contagious disease. Other factors in play include the attitudes that people hold and potentially competing values, such as safety and freedom. For instance, more and more retail businesses are requiring employees and customers to wear face coverings when shopping in stores, yet some people feel this is a violation because it infringes on their personal liberties (Mervosh etal., Reference Mervosh, Fernandez and Robertson2020). Another competing interest can be that between ensuring safety and preserving employment. Thus, employers during the current COVID-19 crisis have grappled with striking a balance between keeping their businesses open and providing a safe work environment. Such conflicting beliefs about what employers are and are not obligated to do creates seemingly impossible tensions and moral dilemmas. On one hand, employers are being required to provide a safe work environment, but determining what is required versus what is recommended is daunting. On the other hand, employees and customers may perceive obligations differently, and those perceived obligations may be at odds with one another. Understanding what workers expect with respect to health and safety—that is, their psychological contracts—is thus crucial moving forward.

An initial way to understand psychological contracts about health and safety might be to understand where and why breaches occur. For example, analyzing social media and news stories (including the comment sections, where available) could be an informative source for developing a sense of the types of psychological contract violations happening and the complexities that are behind them. We suspect some of the driving forces behind perceived violations are moral tensions between individual freedoms and sacrificing for the good of the community, challenges associated with managing a maze of regulations so as not to discriminate against protected classes (e.g., age and disability) and privacy rights, and social norms that shape how workers and customers perceive each other’s role in workplace safety.

Whose health and safety psychological contracts are of interest?

Although there is a rich literature on psychological contracts, research on psychological contracts for workplace safety is limited in scope, focusing on occupations where workplace hazards are common (e.g., medical, construction; Newaz etal., Reference Newaz, Davis, Jefferies and Pillay2019; Walker, Reference Walker2013). However, today safety hazards related to disease spread are relevant in previously unexamined occupations, such as “essential work” (e.g., grocery stores) and jobs involving frequent contact with others (e.g., retail, hospitality), suggesting an urgent need to research these groups. Thus, research about health and safety psychological contracts beyond traditional hazardous occupations is needed.

As noted above, psychological contracts are idiosyncratic, therefore it is important to understand how perceptions vary and why. For example, tolerance for breaches in psychological contracts varies in part as a function of age (Ng & Feldman, Reference Ng and Feldman2009). Older workers are thought to be more tolerant of perceived contract violations because they are better able to regulate their emotions and more willing to excuse misconduct compared with younger workers. However, in times of a pandemic where older workers are at greater risk of serious illness, it is unclear how breaches to psychological contracts related to workplace safety and health will be viewed by older workers or by others at increased risk or in riskier occupations. Moreover, employees’ psychological contracts for workplace safety and health may include perceptions of employers’ obligation to others besides employees themselves, such as individuals at high risk that employees come in contact with either as part of their work activities or in their personal lives in the community, including family members.

During a pandemic, it might also be crucial to understand the psychological contracts of customers, clients, other beneficiaries of work, and even the general public because the consequences of these contracts extend to workers. For example, in the case of retail business requiring masks, evidence suggests employees may perceive this as employers fulfilling their safety obligation. However, some customers may see this as overreach and retaliate, sometimes violently, against the employees who are left to enforce the mask rules (MacFarquhar, Reference MacFarquhar2020), which in turn infringes on the employees’ safety. Furthermore, businesses stand to lose customers if they try to enforce safety measures, such as mask wearing. Other times the retaliation is against businesses attempting to respect individual choice about safety, such as a national movie theatre chain in the US that reversed its policy of not requiring patrons to wear masks after an intense backlash from the public (Gross, Reference Gross2020).

How can workers’ psychological contracts about safety be managed?

One key question to consider: How might psychological contracts be managed during periods of rapid change and high risk, such as the current global pandemic? Psychological contracts are believed to be dynamic, evolving over time (Rousseau, Reference Rousseau1995; Schalk & Roe, Reference Schalk and Roe2007), although research on changes in psychological contracts is limited. Schalk and Roe (Reference Schalk and Roe2007) proposed that critical events, such as organizational or individual changes, have a profound effect on assessing and revising psychological contracts. To date, the dynamic nature of psychological contracts in times of extreme external environmental change has received limited attention, leaving questions about how the contracts can change and which individual differences contribute to contract changes. Understanding the likely highly dynamic nature of psychological contracts during a pandemic is important as the external situation evolves and as individuals’ perceptions of risk change. Individuals likely revise their psychological contracts for safe work, altering their previous beliefs about employers’ obligations for creating and maintaining a safe work environment.

In practice, upholding the integrity of a psychological contract may become disproportionately important for vulnerable groups during a pandemic. Individuals with certain health conditions (e.g. cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease), older adults, the obese, and those with compromised immune systems (Cirrincione etal., Reference Cirrincione, Plescia, Ledda, Rapisarda, Martorana, Moldovan, Theodoridou and Cannizzaro2020; Jordan etal., Reference Jordan, Adab and Cheng2020; Richardson etal., Reference Richardson, Hirsch, Narasimhan, Crawford, McGinn and Davidson2020) may experience more adverse outcomes as a result of a breach of psychological contract than do members of the general population. Such vulnerability might imply perceived greater investment of “capital” on the part of at-risk workers and a corresponding expectation of obligation on the part of the employer. Organizations may therefore need to be strategic in managing psychological contracts with their employees during COVID-19.

The literature provides some general guidance for avoiding perceived breaches and maintaining psychological contracts. Perceived violations of psychological contracts are often attributed to two factors, reneging and incongruence (Morrison & Robinson, Reference Morrison and Robinson1997; Robinson & Morrison, Reference Robinson and Morrison2000). Reneging refers to organizational agents knowingly failing to meet an obligation, whereas incongruence stems from differing views on whether an obligation exists and the nature of the obligation. Perceived psychological contract violations caused by reneging can be reduced by being careful about promises made, particularly in times of uncertainty, whereas violations stemming from incongruence can be reduced by clear and frequent communication with potential and new employees (Robinson & Morrison, Reference Robinson and Morrison2000). Perceived incongruence might be especially relevant during a pandemic because of different beliefs employees have about employer obligations toward workplace safety.

Finally, Niehoff and Paul (Reference Niehoff and Paul2001) proposed strategies for employers to sustain psychological contracts. First, develop and maintain clear, honest employee communication. Second, offer fair and competitive wages and benefits that meet employees’ expectations. Third, clearly communicate performance evaluation criteria. Fourth, provide periodic performance feedback to clarify evaluation standards. Next, develop consistent and fair disciplinary procedures that include a process for stating grievances, and communicate those procedures to all employees. Finally, include employees in organizational change processes.