Standard). Launched in 2013 as a joint initiative of the Mental
Health Commission of Canada, Canadian Standards Association
and the Bureau de normalization du Québec, the voluntary
Standard has encouraged more Canadian employers to address
workplace mental health issues.
A better understanding of the connection between trust and
psychological well-being can be obtained by analyzing GPTW
survey data using the Standard’s framework of workplace psycho-logical
health and safety.
At the core of GPTW’s methodology is its Trust Model. The
model is the basis for its Trust Index Survey, an assessment tool
used annually by thousands of organizations in over 90 coun-tries.
Survey results are used to produce the U.S. list of 100 Best
Companies to Work For, published in Fortune and the Canadian
list of Best Workplaces, published in the Globe and Mail. Great
workplaces invest in their people knowing this creates competi-tive
advantage.
Great Place to Work Institute Canada provided data from
48,281 respondents in 201 Canadian organizations it surveyed
with the Trust Index in 2017 and 2018. Detailed analysis of
these data confirms that investing in people above all else means
promoting their psychological well-being. Trust Index Survey
results shed new light on the organic connection between a
high-trust culture, on one hand, and employee well-being, on
the other.
HOW HEALTHY AND SAFE
ARE GREAT WORKPLACES?
GPTW’s Trust Index Survey asks respondents to rate how true
the following statement is: “This is a psychologically and emotion-ally
healthy place to work.”
This single question provides a global indicator of whether or
not a workplace promotes employees’ psychological well-being.
Workplaces with the highest trust levels are experienced as psy-chologically
and emotionally healthy. This becomes clear when
comparing the top 20 organizations (or top 10 per cent) surveyed
by GPTW during 2017-18, based on their overall Trust Index
score, with the other 181 organizations the Institute surveyed.
Four out of five employees in a high-trust workplace consider it
to be a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace (see
Figure 1). This compares with fewer than half in all the other
organizations GPTW surveyed. Essentially, a psychologically and
emotionally healthy workplace is a “great place to work.”
Also relevant is that four out of five employees in the top 20
organizations examined in Figure 1 believe that their employers’
facilities contribute to a good working environment, far more than
employees in organizations with lower trust levels. Almost all (95
per cent) of the employees in the top 20 organizations consider
their workplaces safe.
Interestingly, physical safety also is positively rated (83 per
cent) in all the other organizations surveyed by GPTW. This
leadership
50 ❚ FEBRUARY 2019 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
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