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Co-produced decentralised surveys as a trustworthy vector to put employees' well-being at the core of companies' performance

Adèle Bréart De Boisanger, Wendy Sims-Schouten, Francois Sicard

TL;DR

The goal is to provide a dual cultural-technological framework along with conceptual clarity on how the technological implementation of confidence can connect with the cultural development of trust, ensuring that blockchain-based decentralised wellbeing surveys are not only secure and reliable but also perceived as trustworthy vector to improve workplace conditions.

Abstract

Assessing employees' well-being has become central to fostering an environment where employees can thrive and contribute to companies' adaptability and competitiveness in the market. Traditional methods for assessing well-being often face significant challenges, with a major issue being the lack of trust and confidence employees may have in these processes. Employees may hesitate to provide honest feedback due to concerns not only about data integrity and confidentiality, but also about power imbalances among stakeholders. In this context, blockchain-based decentralised surveys, leveraging the immutability, transparency, and pseudo-anonymity of blockchain technology, offer significant improvements in aligning responsive actions with employees' feedback securely and transparently. Nevertheless, their implementation raises complex issues regarding the balance between trust and confidence. While blockchain can function as a confidence machine for data processing and management, it does not inherently address the equally important cultural element of trust. To effectively integrate blockchain technology into well-being assessments, decentralised well-being surveys must be supported by cultural practices that build and sustain trust. Drawing on blockchain technology management and relational cultural theory, we explain how trust-building can be achieved through the co-production of decentralised well-being surveys, which helps address power imbalances between the implementation team and stakeholders. Our goal is to provide a dual cultural-technological framework along with conceptual clarity on how the technological implementation of confidence can connect with the cultural development of trust, ensuring that blockchain-based decentralised well-being surveys are not only secure and reliable but also perceived as trustworthy vector to improve workplace conditions.

Co-produced decentralised surveys as a trustworthy vector to put employees' well-being at the core of companies' performance

TL;DR

The goal is to provide a dual cultural-technological framework along with conceptual clarity on how the technological implementation of confidence can connect with the cultural development of trust, ensuring that blockchain-based decentralised wellbeing surveys are not only secure and reliable but also perceived as trustworthy vector to improve workplace conditions.

Abstract

Assessing employees' well-being has become central to fostering an environment where employees can thrive and contribute to companies' adaptability and competitiveness in the market. Traditional methods for assessing well-being often face significant challenges, with a major issue being the lack of trust and confidence employees may have in these processes. Employees may hesitate to provide honest feedback due to concerns not only about data integrity and confidentiality, but also about power imbalances among stakeholders. In this context, blockchain-based decentralised surveys, leveraging the immutability, transparency, and pseudo-anonymity of blockchain technology, offer significant improvements in aligning responsive actions with employees' feedback securely and transparently. Nevertheless, their implementation raises complex issues regarding the balance between trust and confidence. While blockchain can function as a confidence machine for data processing and management, it does not inherently address the equally important cultural element of trust. To effectively integrate blockchain technology into well-being assessments, decentralised well-being surveys must be supported by cultural practices that build and sustain trust. Drawing on blockchain technology management and relational cultural theory, we explain how trust-building can be achieved through the co-production of decentralised well-being surveys, which helps address power imbalances between the implementation team and stakeholders. Our goal is to provide a dual cultural-technological framework along with conceptual clarity on how the technological implementation of confidence can connect with the cultural development of trust, ensuring that blockchain-based decentralised well-being surveys are not only secure and reliable but also perceived as trustworthy vector to improve workplace conditions.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 12 sections, 1 figure, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Well-being assessment and the issue of trust and confidence in the digital realm
  3. Well-being assessment in the digital realm
  4. Importance of anonymity and confidentiality in the digital realm
  5. Revising the role of Trust and confidence in Digital well-bing assessment
  6. Blockchain technology and well-being assessment
  7. Blockchain as a confidence machine for well-being assessments
  8. Limitations of the confidence machine – the need for trust
  9. Co-production as a cultural element for building trust in the digital realm
  10. Relational cultural theory and the role of co-production in building trust
  11. Co-produced Decentralised wellbeing assessment framework (CoDeWe)
  12. Discussion and Conclusion

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: Overall architecture of the CoDeWe framework showing the connection between the cultural component (co-production) and technological component (on-chain metadata, smart contracts, digital signatures, decentralised data storage) needed to balance cultural trust with technological confidence. The different dimensions of the surveys are co-produced off-chain using capacity building, technical facilitation, participatory design and feedback loops to identify and address potential stigmas and power imbalance among the different stakeholders (step 1). The finalised questions and rules of the surveys are translated on-chain into a smart contract deployed on a public blockchain, such as Ethereum (step 2). The respondents access the survey off-chain using a web interface (step 3). After completing the survey, the respondent digitally signs their responses using their unique cryptographic key to verify their authenticity (step 4). The actual survey responses are stored off-chain in a decentralised data storage (step 5). The unique hash identifier generated for the survey responses along with the respondent's digital signature and a timestamp constitute the metadata that is recorded on-chain on the blockchain. Additionally, a centralised data storage, such as MySQL, provides efficient querying and analysis of responses off-chain (step 6). The administrator periodically retrieves responses from the off-chain centralised database. They analyse the data, generating reports and visualisations based on the survey results. After analysis, they generate a summary hash for the analysed data. which is stored on-chain to provide a verification point for users (step 7 and step 8).