Follow the Money – Trust Pays
PwC have released the key findings from their 2024 trust survey.
93% of business executives agree that building and maintaining trust improves the bottom line.
This is trust from both consumers and employees.
We often think of the moral case for building trust – but there is a real business case, too.
The business case
It is time to understand your trust levels among your consumers, employees, and other stakeholders – and intentionally work to improve it. If you do, you will have a clear edge over your competitors.
In this newsletter, I want to focus on trust between employer and employee because, as my September 2021 newsletter said, quoting Shep Hyken, “What happens on the inside of the organisation is felt on the outside by the customer.”
Research from Slack on the future of work shows that feeling trusted in the workplace has the greatest impact on employee productivity.
Trusted employees report:
· 2.1x better focus
· 2x higher productivity
· 4.3x greater overall satisfaction with work
Trusted employees are significantly more likely (1.3x) to say they put in more effort at work. They’re also 1.2x more likely to say they’re willing to go above and beyond than those who don’t feel trusted at work (40% vs. 33%).
The trust gap
In the PwC report, 86% of business executives say they highly trust their employees.
Only 60% of employees feel highly trusted.
I wrote several articles about trust back in September last year.
“What? You Don’t Trust Me?” referenced the Edelman Trust Barometer, Gallup’s measures of trust, and PwC’s 2023 Trust Survey. All indicated a worrying trust gap.
That was followed by “Trust? You Want Me to Fix It? Part 1” and “Trust? You Want Me to Fix It? Part 2”, which explored the Trust Matrix.
In this year’s PwC study, 86% of business executives think employee trust is high, compared to 67% of employees who say they highly trust their employer. That's 33% who do not! According to the study, this 18-point employee trust gap is higher than before.
The Slack survey revealed that more than one in four employees believe “my employer doesn’t trust me.”
It also found that the trust issue is present globally across industries and lines of business. It’s also equally present across all ages and tenures, indicating it’s not just a problem among newer or more junior employees. Nor is it a performance problem: among those who don’t feel trusted, 87% report meeting or exceeding manager expectations.
Christina Janzer, SVP of Research and Analytics, Slack said:
“This research reveals a new path for leaders: to build trust in the workplace, focus on showing your employees that you trust them. Feeling trusted breeds hard work, which leads to more trust. This is a virtuous cycle all leaders can take advantage of to boost employee performance and well-being.”
The new path
If you are a leader, you must find a new path to build trust in your workplace. Firstly, there are things you MUST stop doing.
Stop:
· Measuring hours
· Monitoring and surveillance
· Micromanaging
· The biases
· Being unaccountable
When you do any of those things, you say, ‘I do not trust you.”
What do you do instead?
Performance measurement
Employees want to be measured on the value they deliver, not the volume they deliver. They want to be measured on the outcomes they deliver, not the hours they spend at a desk. We know this is challenging for many leaders, as “productivity paranoia” is rife.
Paranoia is the fear that employees will not work if they cannot be seen.
For far too long, these “bad bosses” have feigned measuring productivity and performance by quantifying the length of time an employee is in their line of sight.
For them, performance is measured by hours at the desk. A reduction in productivity is one reason executives are demanding a return to the office. It’s an Orwellian mindset that believes if I cannot see you, I do not know what you are doing. This translates into, “I do not trust you.”
Despite research informing us that employees working remotely are just as productive if not more so, than when they were in the office, bosses do not believe they are being productive because they are out of sight. The crazy thing is that even when they could see them at a desk, they did not know if they were being productive.
Now, you, I, and your employees know that sitting at a desk does not correlate with productivity or performance. Yet, the practice still prevails. So, how do you measure performance? You can’t see how long someone sits at their desk - or can you? I’ll come to that in a moment.
Clarity, not confusion
Every employee must have complete clarity about what is expected of them.
Goals and outcomes must be co-created and agreed on. You and your employee should discuss the following:
· Outcomes to be achieved
· Timeframes
· Perceived obstacles and blockers
· Factors that will support the achievement of outcomes
· Ways in which the outcomes will be measured
· Frequency of progress reporting
Set clear goals and expectations and measure performance on that basis.
When you measure outcomes, not hours, you say, “I trust you.”
Freedom
The prevalence of employee monitoring and surveillance is still at the forefront of media reporting. But it is not something new. I have discussed the reporting on demand for employee monitoring software by TOP10VPN for many years.
In March 2020, the demand increased by 75% compared to the 2019 average. As the following graph shows, there has been a sustained increase in demand for employee surveillance following the initial spike.
As a leader, you must trust your employees and give them the freedom to work where they want, when, and how they want. You employ grown-ups, so treat your workforce accordingly.
Companies use this software to monitor how long an employee is at their desk. They monitor keyboard strokes, emails, location, internet usage, browsing history, websites visited, and much more. They also track employee badge swipes to record when they enter and leave the office.
This monitoring just leads to productivity theatre by employees to meet the absurd expectations of the employer – always in and always on.
Check out this newsletter from May 2022, in which I listed many of the covert devices employees use to appear “always on.”
When companies started to track badge swipes of employees entering the office, we instigated the phenomenon of “coffee badging.” Swiping in, going for a coffee with a colleague, and then heading home. That worked until the company started to track the swipes of employees leaving the office.
There may be legitimate reasons to have surveillance software on employee devices, such as to ensure employee safety, protect assets, detect fraud or theft, and expose potential security breaches. These reasons must be shared with your employees, so they know why the software is present and how it is being used.
When you monitor employee activity with the false belief that it will tell you if they are productive, you are saying, “I do not trust you.”
Empowerment and trust
Stop micromanaging employees. Give them the autonomy to determine how best to achieve an outcome you have agreed to.
Set the goal, and then get out of the way. This is not management by abdication. It doesn't mean you are not there to support, remove obstacles, and advise as needed. Your employees must know they can reach out for help whenever needed.
You can read about how I help leaders move from command and control to empowerment and trust here.
When employees are truly empowered, they feel trusted.
Remove the blinkers
You must be aware of the biases that can result in mistrust. I wrote about these biases in two newsletters, “Remove Your Leadership Blinkers Part 1” and “Remove Your Leadership Blinkers Part 2.”
The most prevalent, and possibly the most dangerous, is proximity bias. Proximity bias occurs when you give preferential treatment to those physically closest to you. This has become particularly prevalent in remote working arrangements.
It is dangerous because it can create a two-tier system – those working in the office and those working remotely.
Many employees do not trust their leader to treat them equitably, regardless of where they work.
They fear working remotely will negatively impact their career progression due to proximity bias. They fear that the leader will favour those they can see, give them good assignments, furnish them with the best projects, and put them forward for promotion.
If you do not treat every employee equally, they will not trust you.
Accountability
An accountable leader takes personal accountability for the choices they make and for their behaviour and actions. They take ownership and act accordingly.
In a nutshell, they say, “The buck stops here.”
An accountable leader does what they say they will do. If they cannot achieve what they stated, they explain why. They take ownership, and there is no finger-pointing.
When leaders are accountable, they create trust within the team as they show commitment to delivering on their promises.
You can read how I help organisations with a lack of accountability here.
Summary
There is not just a moral case for building trust; there is a business case, too.
You must intentionally work to improve trust in your organisation. When you do, you will have a clear edge over your competitors.
But, the first step is to accept that a trust gap exists in your organisation.