It appears that our world has become less trusting, with studies showing that trust in business, government, media, and NGOs is the lowest it has ever been. Trust levels also seem to be divided along generational lines, meaning millennials display the lowest trust levels.
Undoubtedly, this can have enormous consequences, such as reduced creativity, investment, and job opportunities. Interestingly, this trend appeared to be consistent across cultures and countries. Thus, as an organization, you need to do everything possible to counteract any issues in this area. Constructing trust in your business can enhance job satisfaction, innovation, customer and employee retention, and your bottom line.
Even though trust-building seems straightforward, you have to be aware of several factors before your company can embark on a journey towards trust-building.
Say ‘no’ to these when it comes to trust-building
When constructing trust with stakeholders, some companies approach things in a way which damages trust. Take a look at some common mistakes below:
Stopping disagreement
An organization is a group f people trying to accomplish a shared goal, meaning efficient communication is essential. Thus, you must understand that disagreement is typical within open conversations.
Honest discussions will not be able to occur if people avoid disagreeing with each other. Therefore, you need to construct a psychologically secure space for individuals to discuss any potential disadvantages of a process. Even though this method may trigger tension, there’s no doubt that it is healthy – especially in the long term.
Breaking promises
Keeping your promises is crucial in the workplace, meaning you need to motivate your workers and build trust to generate enhanced communication. Thus, breaking promises you make to employees can have devastating consequences in the long run. When you break trust, it becomes challenging for workers to feel secure in the workplace and put forward their best work.
Workers who don’t trust you are likelier to be disengaged with their job and frequently start searching for jobs elsewhere. After all, promising your workers quality, state-of-the-art technology and then giving them inadequate alternatives is unintelligent, triggering employee frustration and attrition.
Micromanagement
Rules within your organization’s workplace exist to ensure that workers are safe and productive and that your customers receive the high-quality services you promise to give them. Despite this, when rules are too restrictive and stop employees from taking risks or being innovative, they can have a negative impact instead.
For a business to succeed, it is undoubtedly better to share the end vision and trust workers to utilize their skills, experience, and logic.
Inadequate communication
Whatever your company’s circumstances are, you need to share them with your employees to build that all-important trust. Teams need to trust their boss to generate a healthy and productive environment. Organizations that keep information hidden from their workers are viewed as relatively untrustworthy.
Rather than becoming untrustworthy, share the information with your team. Your employees will value your honesty and will be likelier to trust you in the long run.
Assuming trust in a distributed workforce
As you will be aware, the workplace is evolving every day. With a more scattered workforce and an expansion of hybrid work, workers are becoming more distributed than ever before. This may spiral into a lack of trust if this is not managed efficiently.
Forming a trusting relationship doesn’t happen overnight. Thus, a proactive company needs to be prepared to set aside the valuable time and effort essential to make trust-building happen.
Say ‘yes’ to the seven elements of trust
Trust is a must-have in any relationship. Workers and customers must be able to trust that their organization is dependable and competent. Furthermore, the organization must be able to trust its workers and stakeholders to act with empathy.
Research shows that you can utilize different levers to construct trust, including consistency, accountability, dependability, competence, empathy, transparency, and integrity. Companies may prioritize various attributes, but an experienced Austin IT partner like us knows they are all needed for success.
Interpreting each attribute and putting each of them into real-life practice could require extensive time, skillsets, and effort that you might be unable to offer. Thus, collaborating with a professional IT support service like us can help take work off your hands whilst you concentrate on the most significant thing: your business.
To explore this concept further, click here to download our eBook, “Trust Matters: SMBs Can Prosper by Prioritizing Trust-Building.”