would you trust him if he's younger?

thehrreview.comPerspective | Survey: Would you trust him if he’s younger?

Survey

Trust, just like any other human characteristic such as love, happi-ness, wealth, success, is a term we hear and use more often. It constitutes one of the main ingredients for a healthy human rela-tionship not only on the personal but also on the professional level. However, just like any other characteristic, independent variables,

such as age, interfere to influence the way we perceive trust and shape our un-derstanding of it. Going from an initial premise that age impacts the way people trust each other, we set forth to test the hypothesis that the wider the age gap between employees and their direct supervisor, the lower the levels of trust are between them.

In this perspective, and with the aim of exploring how much our hypothesis is viable, we surveyed employees from different ages and asked them questions revolving around their relationship with their supervisors.

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by Diana Salman

Would you

he’S younger?TruST him iF


Survey Background & Respondents’ ProfileThis survey was conducted online with multiple choice

questions answered by 201 employees from different

age groups, organizational levels and genders.

Survey Findings

The majority of respondents are younger than their supervisors (166 out of 201) while only 18 respond-ents are older and 17 respondents are of the same age as their supervisor (figure 5)

Looking at the above distribution (166 out of 201 have supervisors who are than themselves) indicates that the positive correlation between age and seniority in the organization still stands true in our days. In other words, it continues to be the case that there are no shortcuts to Leadership positions in Business, as the person needs to be old enough – and consequently, experienced enough – to get promoted to a Manage-rial Job.

Next, respondents who are respectively older (18 out of 201), and younger than their supervisors (166 out of 201), were asked to specify the existing age gap be-tween them and their supervisors (figures 6 and 7).

14 out of the 18 respondents who are older than their supervisors have a gap difference of less than 10 years. This could mean that the bigger the age gap, the less the probability that employees are willing to work un-der a younger supervisor, and can be associated with issues related to ego and trust in the ability of a young-er person to lead an older one.

Q. All respondents were then asked to choose either true or false from a set of statements that aim at describing the nature of the relationship be-tween an employee and his/her direct supervisor.

According to the age gap between them and their su-pervisors, respondents’ answers were distributed as follows:

1. More than 70% of respondents who are of the same age as their super-visors answered ‘True’ on all the statements. However, the percent-age of ‘True’ answers decreased by 26% for the last two statements. This change in responses can be traced to the fact that people of the same age might seek advice from older rather than from people who are of the same age, and would similarly give advice to people who are younger rather than to those of their age.

Figure 2: GenderFigure 1: Age Bracket

Figure 3: Organizational Level

Q. How old is your direct supervisor?

Q. Are you older than your supervisor?

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Figure 4: Supervisor’s age range

Figure 6: By How many years are you older than your supervisor?

Figure 7: By How many years are you younger than your supervisor?

Figure 8a: Respondents answers with no age gap between them and their supervisor

n=18

Figure 5: Employees’ age relative to their supervisor

Note*:n = total number of respondents per questionR = Respondent


After conducting a trend analysis (dotted lines in figure 9a and 9b) on the above results, we depicted a particu-lar pattern that shows that the majority of respondents in each age category answered ‘False’ on the following two statements: • Statement 5: My supervisor gives me advice on

how to move forward with my career• Statement 6: My supervisor gives me total free-

dom to handle a project and then micromanages everything I do.

The results suggest that across the three groups of re-spondents (i.e. those who are of the same age as their supervisor, those who are younger and those who are older than their supervisor), age did not have a ma-jor impact on their responses. However, within the same group, ‘True’ answers dropped as the age gap increased to more than 15 years between employees and their supervisors. Hence, our hypothesis - that the wider the age gap between employees and their direct supervisor, the lower are the levels of trust between them - seems valid for the sample studied.

2. Respondents who were older than their supervisors (18 out of 201) answered ‘True’ on most of the statements. How-ever, as the age gap increased to more than 15 years (older), ‘True’ answers decreased by 17% on average. This percent-age decrease can indicate that there is a certain relation be-tween age and trust, in an or-ganizational context, whereby as the age gap increases be-tween an employee and his/her supervisor, the level of trust between them might de-crease.

3. Respondents who were young-er than their supervisors (166 out of 201) recorded more dis-crepancies in their answers. On average, and across all age gaps, 61% answered ‘True’ for the first statement, while more than 70% answered ‘True’ for the second, third and fourth statements. However, the per-centage of ‘True’ answers de-creased to 50% for the last two statements. Interesting enough, most of the respond-ents agree that that their super-visors are not significantly in-volved in giving them advice on their career matters regardless of the age gaps. This shows, to a high extent, that most man-agers are still more focused on tasks’ execution and much less focused on development of team members and catering for their career aspirations.

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Figure 9a: Trend Analysis for Respondents older than their supervisor and who answered True on the 6 statments

Figure 8b: Respondents older than their supervisor

Figure 8c: Respondents younger than their supervisor

n=18

n=17

n=166

Figure 9b: Trend Analysis for Respondents younger than their supervisor and who answered True on the 6 statments

n=166

Perspective | Survey: Would you trust him if he’s younger?

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The hypothesis that we made at the beginning of our study was validated by respondents whose answers showed that the wider the age gap between them and their supervisor, the less they answered by ‘True’ on the six statements related to trust and relationship with the supervisor, hence indicating decreasing levels of

trust with increasing age gaps. However, the strength of the direct relation between age and trust did not override other factors. Honesty, good working relation-ships, and individual reputation, also shape people’s perception of trust making ‘age’ the least important factor influencing trust between employees.

Diana Salman is HR Consultant at HR Works salwww.hrworks-me.com

Conclusion

Out of 201 respondents surveyed, 194 respondents ranked the factors affecting trust between employees and their direct supervisor (figure 10), from most important to least important. Following are the top five rankings on what affects trust with direct supervisor:1. Honest Behavior (52% of respondents) 2. Good Working Relationships (40% of respondents)3. Individual’s Reputation (50% of respondents)4. High Level of Authority (43% of respondents)5. Age (59% of respondents)

The above figures show that age - for the majority of respondents (115 out of 194) - is the least important factor that shapes their perception of trust and relationship with their supervisor. Other independent variables proved to be inherently associated with trust such as honesty, good work relationships, and the individual’s (the super-visor’s) reputation, as well as his/her level of authority in the organization. This result contradicts previous an-swers that showed deceasing levels of trust between employees and their supervisor with wider age gaps. This contradiction could reveal that, in fact ‘Age’ has less impact on the level of trust between employees and their supervisors, when compared to other factors such as the above influenced respondents’ answers on previous questions.

Q. Rank from most important to least important the main factors that -in your opinion- affect the trust between employees in an organizational context:

Figure 10: Ranking of factors affecting trust between employees and their direct supervisor

would you trust him if he's younger?

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