The importance of fairness

Fairness is one of my favourite topics when it comes to I/O psych. Of the many factors investigated affecting employees' thoughts & behaviours, I've found that fairness comes up time and again as a potent force. This is saying a lot, as there are many factors with more ambiguous effects (e.g., job satisfaction).

This article in the Washington Post covers some recent research in this field that empirically found that employee perceptions of fairness in an organisational restructure significantly predicted engagement and burnout. Effectively, those employees who felt that they were being treated less fairly in the process were more likely to be reporting symptoms of burnout and less likely to be engaged.

This points to the important aspect of fairness in that it's more the perception that matters rather than actual / distributive fairness.