People Analytics and Trust: When Transparency Reveals Too Much

Abstract: Organizations increasingly deploy commercial people analytics (PA) systems to inform workforce decisions, yet fundamental questions remain about how these systems shape employee–employer relationships. This study examines how awareness of information asymmetries created by PA influences employee trust and retention intentions. Using a scenario-based experiment with German knowledge workers (N = 438), we find that PA adoption significantly erodes organizational trust and increases turnover intentions—effects driven primarily by privacy concerns rather than system sophistication. Employees exposed to the full scope of managerial dashboards (Study 1) report substantially worse perceptions than those seeing only employee-facing interfaces (Study 2), revealing how transparency about algorithmic monitoring paradoxically undermines trust. These findings challenge vendor claims that PA enhances employee wellbeing and suggest that current implementations reverse traditional information asymmetries in ways employees find deeply troubling, even when they cannot opt out.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.