Covid, work reorganisation and trust: the importance of employment relations

ABSTRACT

The world met the COVID-19 pandemic with various national strategies to handle the crisis. In Norway, upon the advice of health authorities, the government imposed a societal lockdown on 12 March 2020. This had major consequences for people’s work lives and organisations’ management and daily operations. Many employees were temporarily dismissed, while others suddenly had increased workloads. Working from home became the new normal for those who could perform their tasks online. We used survey data from April 2020 to investigate the impact of the changed work conditions on trust relations in the workplace. We asked whether the informants perceived the changes as consonant with the collective agreements. Trust in management increased significantly among those who were least affected but declined among those who experienced major changes at work. However, this distinction became less marked when we considered adherence to collective agreements and employee influence. This implies that management that ‘plays by the book’ can maintain a high level of trust amidst organisational change.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• managing
• work conditions
• employee influence
• trust

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Norwegian Research Council grant: 314486 “Digital Prism and the Nordic Model of Workplace Democracy under Pressure.” We are grateful to the anonymous reviewer who helped us clarify some points and encouraged us to develop others.

Notes on contributors

Ida Drange

Ida Drange is a Research Professor at the Work Research Institute/Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research interests cover collective bargaining systems and wage formation, occupational regulation, and labour market inclusion of foreign trained professionals.

Eivind Falkum

Eivind Falkum is Research Professor Emeritus at the Work Research Institute/Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway. His research has focused industrial relations, labor relations, union codetermination, employee participation, the growth of HRM under the new liberalism, industrial development, labor markets and organization theory. He holds a Doctor philos. degree about power and opposition in the Norwegian work life.

Christin Thea Wathne

Christin Thea Wathne is a Research Director and Research Professor at Work Research Institute/ Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway. Her research interests include industrial relations, leadership and management, New Public Management, organizational development, organizational learning, professions, social identity and working environment and mastering.