Everyone relies on a certain level of trust to go about their daily business and the loss of trust at work can have long term consequences  for businesses since it reduces performance, damages cooperation and discourages employees from sharing knowledge.

So trust is an essential asset in any company and in order to rebuild it companies need to repair people’s perceptions of the trustworthiness of others, their company, its leaders or managers. Studies have found that trustworthiness has four components and how far leaders inspire these perceptions will determine whether they are trusted or not:-

1. Ability – the extent people believe in the other persons competence
2. Benevolence – the extent people believe that the other person cares about his or her well being
3. Integrity – the extent people can detect in the other person moral principles and good standards of behaviour
4. Predictability – a consistent behaviour in the other person

Six ways of repairing trust in business

1. Encourage employees to create a network of trusted work-related contacts and relationships. If one of these relationships then becomes strained, the other relationships in the network should be sufficiently strong to maintain the trust
2. Manage the business with integrity and recognise that you have a choice about how you lead in difficult times since it is (usually) within your power to make things better or worse for staff
3. Managers should be seen to serve the workforce and those that can demonstrate their goodwill and integrity on a daily basis make a difference. Managers who see themselves as having a duty to serve the needs of their employees, as well as customers are likely to be more trusted by their employees.
4. Employees appreciate honest and direct communication and being treated like adults so if there is bad news to be told….tell it to them straight.
5. Reengage managers so that they are fully aware of the senior managers goals as this will help to create a line of trust through the company
6. Have HR policies and processes in place as they provide clues and signals to the employee of your company’s trustworthiness. The way these policies are then implemented by managers provides the evidence to the employee about whether the company’s intentions are genuine.

As the old saying goes “Trust enters on foot but leaves on horseback” and it explains the speed with which trust can be broken. Trust takes years to develop but poor moves by managers or others can destroy trust very quickly. Companies demonstrating good morals and concern for everyone will not only maintain trust but may actually increase it and could even enjoy higher growth, over the next few years, than those companies demonstrating less compassion.

In2HR
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High Street
Bray
Berkshire
SL6 2AH
Tel +44 (0) 1628 622722

We can help you hire and retain the best employees, manage your employees more successfully, and improve employee motivation. Whatever your HR outsourcing needs, In2HR can assist any company within the Thames Valley areas, including Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxon and Surrey. So why not contact us today.