Creating Trust in the Workplace
Warren Buffet said, “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. When it’s absent, everybody notices.”
This is the central principle of my work with leaders. It’s the thread that connects my books, my consulting work, and my coaching work together.
Why Trust Is Important in the Workplace
These wise words illuminate a basic truth about relationships - including those we create at work. When trust exists, things are easy, work gets done efficiently, people feel energized and fulfilled, and teams are successful.
When trust is lacking, everything becomes more difficult. Work is a slog. Teams don’t perform well together. And, ultimately, the business suffers.
An organization without trust is like an organism without air. It can’t survive or thrive without it. Trust is what keeps relationships healthy and performing optimally. It’s the key ingredient in the recipe for organizational well-being and long-term success.
According to a study by Harvard Business Review, people at high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, and 40% less burnout.
In short, cultivating high levels of trust is a business imperative for leaders at all levels.
Developing Trust in the Workplace
Building and sustaining trust in the workplace is a multifaceted and continuous process. And it is core to creating a healthy workplace. It requires a steadfast commitment from leaders and must exist at the core of your culture.
Create Trust from the Top with Leadership
Trust begins at the top. Your C-suite executives set the tone, and they should model behaviors they would like to see emulated across the organization. Leaders should act in ways that empower their people, support them in their work, remove roadblocks, and ultimately set them up for success.
Exceptional leaders who build trust with employees know that they should surround themselves with people who are smarter than them or who have different perspectives to help them see things differently. Respecting your employees’ expertise and allowing them to showcase their skills and talents goes a long way in building high-trust and high-performance teams.
Act on Feedback to Build Trust in the Workplace
Many organizations send out regular employee sentiment surveys, but few act on the results. It can be difficult to hear negative feedback from your people or that they feel unfulfilled in their work.
It’s important to understand that feedback is a gift, even if you sometimes wish it came with a gift receipt.
Feedback is incredibly valuable. It gives you important insights that will help you take action to improve your workplace. With it, you can see your organization’s strengths and areas of opportunity. Use your strengths to your advantage and start with them to help build momentum.
Provide regular updates and celebrate big and small milestones along the way. Each step on your journey to creating a high-trust workplace is important. It’s equally important to share your failures and let your employees know what you’ve learned and what you’ll do better next time. Humility and vulnerability are key attributes in creating trust, so be sure to tap into them early and often.
Provide Growth Opportunities to Create Trust
Finding meaning and purpose in work is among the most important factors in feeling fulfilled, energized, and engaged. It’s also a hallmark of high-trust, healthy workplaces. Leaders can help their employees in this aspect of their careers by providing growth opportunities that align with their career goals. In my book, Make Work Healthy, we discuss the concept of coherence. In short, coherence is the sense that life is meaningful, manageable, and comprehensible. We’re individually and collectively more productive when our work and our lives are coherent.
Providing leadership opportunities for your people is one way to create a path for growth. You can also create rotational assignments or establish secondments so your employees can experience new business areas and develop skills they might not have.
How to Rebuild Trust in the Workplace
The working world is unpredictable and constantly changing. Organizations sometimes need to navigate rough waters, and things don’t go as planned.
Perhaps you had an unfortunate round of layoffs that impacted employee morale. Maybe significant shifts in senior leadership have caused massive disruption and ripple effects throughout your organization. Or you could be experiencing some economic headwinds due to decreasing client demand or unsuccessful product launches.
Whatever the case, know you always have an opportunity to rebuild trust and get your culture back on track.
The first and most important step is to acknowledge the issue - publicly. Share the situation and context with all your people. Let them know what your plan is to right the ship. Commit to regular communications and cascade important updates through all levels of your organization. Ask your employees what they need, and then give it to them. Provide regular status updates.
Rebuilding trust in the workplace doesn’t happen overnight. It requires dedication and consistency every day to make it happen. It’s especially important to double down on increasing trust when things seem like they might never change. Push through and keep going. Your business depends on it.
Examples of Trust and Respect in the Workplace
There are thousands of case studies for success, many of which I’ve seen first-hand throughout my career and research. The examples below are as unique as the companies themselves, highlighting that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating trust and respect in the workplace. I hope these stories inspire you to start your own journey and to commit to a high-trust, high-performance culture.
SAS Institute
Cary, North Carolina-based SAS Institute is one of the world’s leading analytics software companies. Not only that, it’s also renowned for its best-in-class workplace culture, having been named among the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America by Fortune Magazine every year since its inception in 1997.
How has SAS been able to create and sustain an outstanding culture? By creating a culture of care that starts with the CEO and permeates every level of the organization. Managers are a vital part of stewarding this culture of care, and they hire top talent who align with the values and philosophies that have made SAS a great workplace for decades.
SAS promotes health and well-being with a myriad of programs and benefits, including an on-site healthcare center that opened in 1994, long before many other companies followed suit. It also provides on-site daycare centers to support working parents with childcare and embraces a hybrid work environment that allows for healthy work-life integration.
The company understands that not all employees have the same needs, so it tailors its solutions to fit each person’s individual needs, whether they’re emotional, social, financial, physical, or community-focused.
Futurice
Futurice, a digital engineering company, faced a choice in 2008 as it experienced the growing pains of a scaling business. Should it adopt a more hierarchical, command-and-control structure like many traditional businesses?
The answer was clear: no.
Instead, they leaned into a culture of radical transparency and trust. For instance, Futurice issued credit cards to everyone in the company and didn’t impose spending limits. Instead, all bills, including the CEO’s, were posted on the company Intranet. The result? Decreased spending. The company also introduced salary transparency, which helped highlight and address any gender pay issues.
This level of openness extended to clients, too. Futurice set up a code of conduct with its clients to protect its people from adverse treatment. The company also polled employees to see what work was most meaningful to them, and it actively pitched those projects in the market.
Aviva
Aviva is an insurance multinational headquartered in London with almost 22,000 staff members. It has employed an effective workplace well-being model that starts from the top and is integrated into all aspects of the business.
The company appointed Debbie Bullock as its Well-being Lead at Aviva UK. She credits this as one reason for its continued success. Having someone whose role is to center well-being helps advise senior leaders to make decisions with their employees’ health in mind.
Debbie also used a data-driven approach, showing how the well-being strategies helped result in a 5-pound return in reduced absenteeism.
Leaders are supported in walking the talk by being given development opportunities on subjects like boundary-setting and leading a remote workforce. Employees are supported in overcoming feelings of isolation through connections driven by Yammer groups, chat tools, and “Happy to Chat” benches set up around offices. The organizational design and business architecture teams also worked with Debbie to help redesign roles around four key areas: purpose, clear accountabilities, empowerment, and sustainable workload.
Danske Bank UK
Belfast-headquartered Danske Bank UK developed a short, 30-minute live podcast series, delightfully called Positivi-tea, focused on well-being topics ranging from physical health to mindset and motivation to practical strategies for coping with mental health issues, like stress and anxiety.
They avoid hosting podcasts on Mondays and Fridays and schedule them around 9:30 AM as that works best for people to attend live if they’re able. The episodes are also available on demand, so folks can download and listen to them whenever it works best. Those who listen live can interact with the hosts, ask questions, share their experiences, and participate in polls.
Recent topics have included Igniting the Spark, Walking the Walk, Adaptive Working, Mindfulness, and Work-Life Balance.
The podcast series has been a success and has provided an ongoing opportunity for leaders to showcase their commitment to well-being by attending the live sessions when they’re able. The events have also provided a safe space for people to share personal stories openly and vulnerably. The stats speak for themselves - more than 50% of the population attends live sessions or downloads them to listen when they can.
For more insights on how you can create a workplace focused on mental health, check out Make Work Healthy and my coaching solutions, or schedule a consulting call with me.