Overview
Goal
The Swiss HR Barometer is a SNF infrastructure project. Since 2006, the Swiss HR Barometer analyzes how employees in Switzerland experience their work situation. Using a representative, regularly conducted and differentiated survey of employees in Switzerland, both the relationship between employees and their employer and the current working climate in organizations in Switzerland are examined in detail. In addition to current, changing focus topics, trends on HRM practices, the psychological contract, work attitudes and behavior, and career orientations are surveyed in each edition.
The Swiss HR Barometer is published by Dr. Anja Feierabend, lecturer at the Institute of Business and Regional Economics IBR of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), and Prof. Dr. Bruno Staffelbach, director of the Center for Human Resource Management and full professor of business administration at the University of Lucerne. The former co-editor of the project is Prof. Dr. Gudela Grote, Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology, ETH Zurich.
Research approach
The psychological contract stands at the center of our theoretical model. This construct measures the mutual expectations and inducements of employer and employees that go beyond the obligations in the formal, legal employment contract. Based on this, we analyze which factors influence the stability of this contract, and what effects the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of a contract has on the work attitudes and behavior intentions of the employees. In addition to the personal and organizational key characteristics of the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, attitudes such as career orientation also act as influencing factors. In order to comprehensively analyze the work situation, influencing factors of human resource management such as work design and leadership are also surveyed. Finally, a wide range of work attitudes and employee behavioral intentions are measured as outcome variables.
Method
The survey of employees is conducted in 2-years intervals. The survey method is based on a mixed-methods approach, in which the survey is conducted online or in writing, depending on the preference of the respondent. The sample includes a total of almost 2000 employees from German-, French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland. The sampling is based on the sample register of the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. Only target persons between the ages of 16 and 65 are drawn. Furthermore, self-employed and non-employed persons are excluded, since the focus of the study is on labor relations and the work situation of employees in an employment relationship. For similar reasons, employees who are employed less than 40% are excluded from the survey.
