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CC'ing the Boss on Email Makes Employees Feel Less Trusted, Study Finds (hbr.org)

Posted by msmash on from the psychology-of-work dept.

Do you ever loop your boss when having a conversation with a colleague when his or her presence in the thread wasn't really necessary? Turns out, many people do this, and your colleague doesn't find it helpful at all. From an article: My collaborators and I conducted a series of six studies (a combination of experiments and surveys) to see how cc'ing influences organizational trust. While our findings are preliminary and our academic paper is still under review, a first important finding was that the more often you include a supervisor on emails to coworkers, the less trusted those coworkers feel (alternative link). In our experimental studies, in which 594 working adults participated, people read a scenario where they had to imagine that their coworker always, sometimes, or almost never copied the supervisor when emailing them. Participants were then required to respond to items assessing how trusted they would feel by their colleague. ("In this work situation, I would feel that my colleague would trust my 'competence,' 'integrity,' and 'benevolence.'") It was consistently shown that the condition in which the supervisor was "always" included by cc made the recipient of the email feel trusted significantly less than recipients who were randomly allocated to the "sometimes" or "almost never" condition. Organizational surveys of 345 employees replicated this effect by demonstrating that the more often employees perceived that a coworker copied their supervisor, the less they felt trusted by that coworker. To make matters worse, my findings indicated that when the supervisor was copied in often, employees felt less trusted, and this feeling automatically led them to infer that the organizational culture must be low in trust overall, fostering a culture of fear and low psychological safety.

8 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Fighting words by s1d3track3D · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Do you ever loop your boss when having a conversation with a colleague when his or her presence in the thread wasn't really necessary?

    Them's fighting words!

    1. Re:Fighting words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Turns out, many people do this, and your colleague doesn't find it helpful at all.

      Hey Colleague! I'm not CC'ing the boss to help you out.

    2. Re:Fighting words by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That, or I'm praising / thanking the colleague for something.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:Fighting words by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If someone emails me and CC's their boss, I assume it is because their boss wanted them to. That means the boss is interested in the issue at hand (usually a good thing) or he's a control freak (usually a bad thing). Either way I don't hold it against the sender. In reality its pretty rare when its not obvious to my why the boss was included.

  2. That's the point... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's often kind of the point isn't it?

    You don't trust someone to do their job, possibly they've been screwing around or taking their sweet time.
    A swift CC to the boss and a "hey, what's the progress on this?" is one way to get it moving.

    On the other hand, doing it all the time is poor form if it's really a one to one conversation where escalation isn't needed.

    1. Re:That's the point... by msauve · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Precisely.

      "...more often you include a supervisor on emails to coworkers, the less trusted those coworkers feel..."

      It's probable that the author has reversed the causality - it's the less trusted coworkers who more often find bosses cc:'d on emails.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  3. From the land of duh? by crashumbc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Of course, it isn't meant to make them feel trusted.

    99% of the time I cc' my boss it's because the co-worker is trying to get me involved in something I shouldn't be, or make a "end-round" my boss.

    I don't have time for that shit.

  4. Number One Rule... by sycodon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...never let your boss get blindsided by anything you are even remotely related to if you can help it.

    If you have information, reservations, disagreements with anyone, co-workers, customers, no matter, loop your boss in on it. The Boss is there to coordinate and clear obstacles so that you can do your job and so the company can achieve its goals (at least in a healthy, sane organization).

    There are always two sides at least to everything and each "side" will go up the other chain of command. If you don't keep your management involved, they will look like fools when asked about it in their meetings and they have no knowledge or response. That will then come back to you.

    If your colleagues are professionals, they will understand and will do it themselves.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.