Do your employees trust you?
It may seem a minor detail if you’re part of a busy concern and profits are steady. But you don’t only have a humanitarian responsibility to ensure your team members feel stable and fulfilled: you have an opportunity to boost the value of your business. Because a company where the regular employees trust the management is one that can expect full commitment from its workers. And that means they’ll go beyond achieving the bare minimum for you.
So how does a business leader or HR manager go about cultivating trust in their team?
The first step is to be open. An ‘us and them’ mentality can only result in divided efforts. Ensure instead that your management and middle-management are open about your company’s business goals and strategies.
Have transparent, two-sided conversations with your staff about stuff like salaries, prospects, and expectations. We no longer live in the era of the distant oligarch: today’s management should see, and treat, their employees as teammates, not subordinates.
And building trust isn’t all about workplace strategy. It’s also about being an open and friendly human being. Holding social events and teambuilding exercises can help your employees to discover the human that dwells beneath your professional façade – and for you to discover them. Social exercises like this can actually boost hormone levels which results in an impulse for ‘collective action.’
To win your team around, try following these ten steps from our friends at The Business Backer to build trust in the workplace. And then share the guide with the rest of your management team so they can learn to open up, too!
Author
Paul Slezak
With over two decades of experience in the recruitment and human capital industry, Paul Slezak has established himself as a transformative force in the realm of leadership and career coaching, group facilitation, and talent acquisition. His unique perspective, drawn from his early career as a leader in global recruitment firms and his entrepreneurial success with his own start-up, has enabled him to make a significant impact on leaders, teams, and organizations across the world. Paul's passion for helping others achieve success and high performance is evident in his commitment to transforming leaders and their teams at local, national, and international levels. He specializes in promoting the importance of human-centered intelligence, focusing on soft skills such as authenticity, transparency, and trust to complement business-centered acumen and drive better workplace outcomes. As an impartial facilitator, Paul brings his expertise to team offsites and strategy days, ensuring alignment on goals, values, and culture while keeping participants on task. His engaging and energetic presence, coupled with his unique "entertraining" and "edutaining" delivery style, enables him to connect with audiences both large and intimate, sharing personal and professional anecdotes that inspire and energize.
