Trends to look forward in 2018 – Employee Trust

By: Debashish Ghosh

Employee trust -  one of the most discoursed areas in the world of management and human resources. And it does not need a Nostradamus to predict that this subject will continue to be debated and discussed till will businesses exist. So, what is employee trust and how do we build trust in our future organizations? The answers could be simple and complex at the same time.

Let’s consider the simple answers first. Simply put, trust is relationship between two or more individuals based on mutual respect, belief and confidence. The same definition applies to our relationships both within and outside organizations. Question is - can this trust be built from scratch? Or, can trustworthiness be developed from a prevailing organizational climate of distrust? Organizational psychologists and OB specialists believe that the common answer to both the questions is a resounding “Yes”.

There are some fundamentals to building and preserving trust in organizations. First things first, there should be a) fairness in action, b) openness in communication and c) transparency in decision-making. Thereafter comes timely and effective closure of employee concerns and closing loop at the end. Besides these, most modern organizations today listen to employees and involve them in decision-making process to develop a sense of belonging and trust. And the final and the most important one, leaders of the organization walking the talk in demonstrating behaviors that inspire trust. As Peter Drucker had famously and rightly said, “Leadership is an achievement of trust”.

As I mentioned before, these are fundamentals to building trust. The very basics. Such behaviors must be part of the organization’s culture, in true spirit, and not just in fancy posters in meeting rooms. In short, have a CULTURE of TRUST and TRUST as a CORE VALUE, and live it every day!

Fundamentals in place, now let’s look at some complex answers to my original question – “how do we build trust in our future organizations?”. According to the 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, the future organizations should have a “culture of safety, abundance, and importance of risk-taking and innovation”, and they should be “playbook-based” rather than “rule-based”.

To me, there are 3 ways building trust in future organizations:

1. Employee trust as a core business strategy: New business lines, product innovation, M&A and globalization – organizations have these as part of their long-term and short-term business strategies. These factors impact their bottom line, share price, market capitalization and client retention, among other things. As a part of business strategy, organizations should now have TRUST as a strategic differentiator. Like in market share or share price, organization should have a clear goal of increasing the trustworthiness to a certain level. More trust would mean more empowerment to employees. More empowerment would translate into faster decisions and implementation of ideas. This will foster autonomy. Daniel Pink, in his path-breaking book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, mentions autonomy as one of the three factors that drive human motivation (the other two being mastery and purpose). Empirical evidence has confirmed that motivated employees generate more business outcomes. Trust as a core business strategy is specifically important for start-ups and for product innovations.

 

1. Measure trust:  Once it is decided that trust will be a core business differentiator and corporate goal, it needs to be measured. What cannot be measured, cannot be improved. So, can we measure a “baseline trust” of on organization at a given point of time? I think, yes. Here, measuring trust does not mean whether the organization has an environment of collaboration and team work. It surely should not measure the degree of supervisory control. Instead, we should measure whether the employees are trusted enough so that they can take risks and innovate without the fear of failure. The organization can ask fairly simple questions, in the form of a survey, to determine the current trust levels. Some questions that can be asked in the survey are:

Are you afraid of failure?
Do you think we have a culture of risk-taking and innovation?
Are you empowered enough to take your own business decisions?
Do you think that your supervisor/leaders trust you?

The responses can be taken as baseline, and acted upon. At the end of the specific period, the survey should be taken on the same set of questions to determine the variance from the baseline.

 

1. Rewarding trust: Organizations recognize employees for exceeding their targets and goals. If they want to build trustworthiness, they should start recognizing trust. Cheer not only the demonstration of trustworthy behavior by employees - that’s a given. The largest cheers should be reserved for business deals won because of trust. Calculate the financial impact generated through projects where trust played a key role. Incentivize the employees associated with those projects through gain-share or fast-track promotions or higher bonuses or all of those. Only when that happens, employees would be able to see the real tangible benefits of trust.  

 

Overall, our future organizations will be an agile network fueled by learning, innovation, collaboration and risk-taking.  In such a workplace, employee trust will play a significant role much more than what it is now or had been in the past

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