The effects of rapport building on productivity and preference with a simulated work task

Abstract

It has been suggested that building rapport may directly benefit organizations by increasing productivity and discretionary effort. The purpose of this study was to extend previous research on rapport building by using an alternating‐treatments design, which may more accurately reflect how rapport is established in the workplace. That is, positive supervisor–employee relationships are often established over time through multiple interactions. We evaluated check‐processing performance and assessed whether eight college students would choose between working with a researcher who engaged in rapport‐building behavior and one who did not. The results showed that seven participants performed better on the task when working with the rapport‐building researcher during the intervention phase, six participants either preferred or highly preferred working with the rapport‐building researcher during the preference phase, and four out of seven participants engaged in less off‐task behavior when working with the rapport‐building researcher. We discuss implications and directions for future research.