Big Data or Big Brother ? - Big Data HR Control Practices and Employee Trust

The aim of this project is to understand the impact of big data-driven workforce analytics on employees’ trust in their employer. Drawing from literature on HR control practices (Weibel et al., 2015), we expect that three main contingencies will shape employees’ perception of the use of predictive analytics and their trust in the employer: (1) the bundle of metrics and predictive analytics actually used by HR; (2) the implementation of legal requirements by the employer (particularly data and privacy protection laws); and (3) ethical guidelines on what is being measured for what reason, and how individuals’ data are being dealt with. We will study these influences using four modules including the following steps: (1) Interviews with experts on big data from both academia and practice who will serve as a ‘trust in big data’ sounding board for the entire duration of the project; (2) a survey of 1,200 Swiss companies on their big data practices; (3) in-depth case studies of leading companies in the field; and (4) a factorial survey that will allow us to test causal hypotheses derived from modules 1-3.

Big Data, trust, human resources management, HRM, HR analytics, workplace analytics, HR control practices, business ethics, labor law