Employee consent goes beyond legal compliance
- Josephine Tan
- Topics: Compliance, Employee Experience, Home Page - News, News
A new study from Cornell University highlighted the risks organisations face when employees feel uninformed about workplace agreements, even when these agreements meet legal consent standards. The research, published in Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, reveals a significant disconnect between how employers perceive consent and how employees experience it.
The study found that individuals soliciting consent often overestimate how informed employees feel about what they are agreeing to. This “perspective gap” can lead to employers underestimating turnover risks and eroding trust within their workforce.
“When we’re the solicitor, we assume our explanation is clear because we’re so familiar with the content,” said Vanessa Bohns, Braunstein Family Professor of Organisational Development at Cornell’s ILR School and co-author of the study. “But employees need time to process and fully understand the information.”
Bohns and co-author Rachel Schlund of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business conducted six studies, using real-time interactions and surveys of hiring managers. They found that consent solicitors consistently overestimated employees’ understanding and intentions to remain with the organisation.
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The consequences are far-reaching. Employees who feel inadequately informed often experience reduced trust, lower job engagement, and a weakened sense of organisational commitment.
Bohns said, “A big takeaway for employers is that you want to attend to employees’ subjective feeling of how much they understand, because that will determine, down the line, whether they feel like they were hookwinked.”
“Our research suggests that you can’t just focus on getting someone to legally consent to something to protect yourself from liability. You have to make sure that they understand it. Give them time to process it. Make sure you go through it and give them time to ask questions. Otherwise, it basically winds up eroding trust and they feel like you don’t have their best interests at heart.”
