PTWhat I feel and what the company does
Dignity at work has two sides: the dignity of each person and the dignity that shows in the company's practices. With 110 workers in the state of São Paulo, this research measured both together for the first time and found a strong link between them. Explained in 10 screens.
Dignity at work has two sides
Studies of dignity in organizations follow two paths that had never been measured together. One looks at the person; the other, at the company's practices. Pick an aspect and compare:
The dignity every person has
Pirson and colleagues (2023), United StatesThe dignity the company practices
Teixeira and colleagues (2014), BrazilThe dissertation's question: how are the two related, from the point of view of people who work in public and private companies in the state of São Paulo? Source: chapter 2 and Charts 1 to 3.
Answer the way the workers did
The online questionnaire had 48 statements: 24 on how the person feels treated (human dignity) and 24 on what the company does (dignity practices). Here are six of them. Think of your job and give each a score from 1 to 5.
An illustrative exercise, not a diagnosis. ● is your score; ◆ is the average of the workers surveyed across the whole dimension the statement belongs to (Tables 13 and 14), not just that statement. Statements from Charts 1 and 2, translated from the Portuguese version, with the subject ("my manager", "the company") made explicit.
210 people answered; 110 responses remained
The invitation went out in June and July 2024 through professional networks, LinkedIn and WhatsApp groups. Incomplete responses, people outside the target profile and those who marked the same number on almost everything were removed. The final test used 110 workers, twice the calculated minimum.
Circle area proportional to the number of people. Before the final test, the human dignity scale went through a pre-test (61 people) and a validation (116); the practices scale, through a validation (173). Source: section 4.4, Tables 1 to 4 and Final remarks.
Percentages of the 110 in Table 4. Most work in private companies and hold a graduate degree: a more educated group than the average Brazilian worker.
In Brazil, the boss and the company became one
The human dignity scale was created in the United States with three parts: me, my manager and the people in the organization. This was the first time it was used in Brazil. Follow the steps:
Block height proportional to the number of statements in each part (4, 10 and 10). For the author, people who feel their leader treats them with dignity tend to associate this with the dignity of the company itself. Source: sections 4.1.1, 5.1 and 5.2, Tables 7 to 9.
The company doesn't deceive, but it hardly promotes
Two in three workers feel dignified, but only half feel their boss and organization treat them that way. On practices, almost everyone says the company doesn't deceive; few see employee advancement or social responsibility. Tap a bar:
Height = % who scored 4 or 5. The two scales use different words: on the human dignity scale, 4 and 5 are "agree" and "strongly agree"; on the practices scale, 3 is already "agree" and 4 and 5 are "agree a lot" and "agree completely". Compare bars within each color. In "doesn't deceive", the statements are negative ("tries to deceive the customer"); the bar shows those who disagreed with them. Source: Tables 13 and 14.
Those who feel respected see a more dignified company
The hypothesis was confirmed. The more people feel their dignity is protected and promoted, the better they rate the company's practices, toward them and toward customers and society. It is a strong link: a coefficient of 0.670, out of a maximum of 1.
The gauge applies the standardized coefficient: an illustrative reading, in standard deviations from the average, holding the other variables constant. It shows an association at a single point in time, not proof of cause. Model estimated in SmartPLS with 110 people and 5,000 resamples. Source: Table 18.
Feeling dignified accounts for almost all of it
The model explains about 46% of the differences in how people rate the practices. Besides human dignity, the author tested the profile: education, gender, age and holding a leadership position. None of them made a significant difference; almost all the explanation comes from the dignity the person feels. Tap each factor:
Glass: adjusted R² = 45.6% (R² = 48.0%), from the model with human dignity and the four controls. Bars: effect size (f²) of each factor, showing how much it adds to the model. Source: Table 18.
Treating people well is the basis of dignified practices
For the author, how workers rate their company depends heavily on how they feel treated. The dignified treatment that managers and the organization give people is the starting point.
For managers and leaders
- Workers don't separate how the boss treats them from how the company treats them (screen 05).
- On the scale, a good manager recognizes people, is fair, respects autonomy, includes others in decisions and apologizes when wrong.
For companies
- Go beyond the law: paying on time and granting vacations was the most recognized (60.4%), and the author argues it should be close to 100%.
- Advancement and social responsibility are barely perceived (22.5% and 28.1%), despite all the talk about ESG.
For HR and consultancies
- The two scales complement each other: the human dignity scale assesses how managers treat their teams; the practices scale also looks at customers and society.
- HR has a central role in tracking the perception of dignity, which is linked to well-being.
For workers
- Dignity at work is more than being paid on time: it means being treated as a person, not a resource, and having your opinion count.
- The scale statements help put a name to what is missing.
For the author, the study shows how far organizations still need to go toward more dignified working relationships, as seen by those who work in them.
What this research does not say
- A small sample from one state. 110 valid responses, from São Paulo. It is worth repeating with more people, other sectors and other states. · according to the author
- Leaders and non-leaders. Holding a leadership position came close to making a difference (p = 0.06). Comparing the two groups is a next step. · according to the author
- The scale still needs testing. The three parts became two in Brazil; new validations should show whether this happens again and why. · according to the author
- The order of the questions. The practices came first, and more people answered that part. It is worth reversing the order in another sample. · according to the author
- Invited through networks, at a single point in time. It is not a representative sample (more than half have a graduate degree), and each person answered once: the results show association, not cause. · our note
Credits
SANTOS, Letícia Silva. Relação entre dignidade humana no contexto das organizações e dignidade organizacional: um estudo com trabalhadores do Estado de São Paulo [Relationship between human dignity in the context of organizations and organizational dignity: a study with workers in the state of São Paulo]. Master's dissertation (Business Administration) — Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, 2024. Advisor: Prof. Dr. Maria Luisa Mendes Teixeira.
Research supported by CAPES (Brazil's federal agency for graduate education) and MackPesquisa (Mackenzie's research fund). Scales: Dignity Scale (Pirson et al., 2023), translated and validated in Brazil, and EPRA-DO (Teixeira et al., 2014). Data analyzed with structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM, in SmartPLS 4). This version simplifies the work for a general audience; the full validation of the scales and the discussion are in the original text.