We have found ourselves on the other side of Easter. I hope you got time to rest and reflect on the reason for the celebration. Welcome to another weekend. I love always being able to welcome you to the weekend.
Today, we are talking about Trust In the Workplace. Trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of someone or something.
Trust is one of the pillars of Total Quality Management (TQM). Developing trust in the workplace is a key organisational predictor of performance. Many organisations in our country have failed outright where a lack of trust, doubt and suspicion have grown between the leadership, management, and employees.
A lack of trust in the workplace is a good predictor of high turnover rates, increased absenteeism because of illness, low levels of productivity, performance, and employee satisfaction. Developing trust in the workplace is therefore of utmost important.
Let us examine the drivers of trust in organisations, to identify the HRM practices that create trust and examine the effects on employees’ performance. Trust is vital for increased performance.
There are three main factors that create low levels of trust and restrict the development of trust in the workplace. The first is low involvement in decision making. We must ensure that people can make decisions on their own levels.
There should no longer be a long chain of command. When all cadre are not allowed to be involved in the decision-making process, this leads to the grape vine, and can be likened to Chinese whispers. This does not lead to much progress.
Another factor is a lack of opportunity to be able to evaluate and give feedback to the organisation on the effectiveness or otherwise of their performance appraisals and other policies.
We have talked about this to no end when we talked about employee engagement. Tied into the above two is the excessive control by management and managers not listening and implementing.
There is a cultural challenge here in Nigeria. The culture focuses on deferring to the senior person, whether by age or rank. Irrespective of whether the person is right or not.
Wherever we are on the spectrum you must increase trust in the workplace. There are some things that can help develop trust in the workplace. These include co-dependency, where the managers and employees depend on each other to get the job done. Increasing teamwork and team building. There has to be focus on relationship building.
Mutual respect must increase on every side. High levels of engagement, particularly in decision-making, as mentioned above. This way everybody feels a part of ownership and a part of a high performing team. Equality of the distribution of resources.
There must be open and good and honest communication. There must be fairness in everything, especially in appraisals and goal setting. Delegation of responsibility is key because it promotes staff feeling.
Read also: Leadership at workplace – #horriblebosses #toxicworkplace
Besides what is above, some factors deliberately decrease trust in the workplace. These include but not limited to a lack of transparency, particularly of decisions, as I keep saying repeatedly.
Interpersonal and unresolved conflict or conflict that is resolved by resorts to power and status as opposed to being resolved justly and fairly. Disengagement of staff from other areas or indeed disengagement of management from the business and a lack of dedication.
Trust tends to increase in organisations where HRM functions have as an explicit aim of helping people to develop trust. They must foster all the good things already stated above – like open communication, fairness during appraisals, ensuring proper delegation of responsibility and equal distribution of resources.
Even HRM must be strategic to enable not just the above but also equitable treatment and relationship building. All of this helps trust factors increase significantly.
HRM should explicitly and overly target developing trust within and throughout their own function first. Then between themselves and the managers and employees, and finally helping to facilitate the creation of these dimensions between the managers and employees themselves.
I must mention here that if there is a lack of trust within the organisation for any of the above reasons, this will permeate into the way the customers feel also. Not only does a lack of trust deplete within the organisation, it will hit the bottom-line and indeed it can lead to such a struggle to breath and even the demise of an organisation.
Trust issues exist and must be treated. This is necessary for survival. Have a great weekend and I hope business owners will allow HRM do what is needful.
Have a great weekend. Remember to rest.
