It's All About Transparency

In this series, professionals predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2016. Read the posts here, then write your own (use #BigIdeas2016 in your piece).

With the end of the year approaching, it’s time to look back and understand which are the big tendencies in workplace and HR for 2016. To do so, we analyzed the evolution in the Trust Index? survey in Brazil from 2011 to 2015.

Looking at the results, it was possible to find a common ground among Great Place to Work’s Best Workplaces in Brazil. Fairness is a theme present in five of the six biggest workplace improvements in the last 5 years.

Those numbers indicate some interesting trends on what can be expected for 2016 among the Best Companies to Work For (and other organizations committed to building a great workplace):

Quality of communication is improving...

Since financial scandals such as Enron’s threatened the whole global economy, corporate governance practices have become more frequent and required by markets, governments, and shareholders. Transparency becomes less of a value and more of a requisite by the day.

The Best Workplaces took even a further step by extending these practices to the inside as well. Their leaders are better prepared, know a lot about corporate values, strategy and culture, and are able to communicate them in an efficient way for their teams. Besides, the HR departments in these companies created solid practices to guarantee that transparency and open communication become realities. In these organizations, there is no room for speculation. 

...but there’s still a long road ahead

Looking again at the Fairness-related affirmatives, it’s noticeable that those scores are still low, even among the Best Workplaces (as a reference, the final Trust Index? score in 2015 was 84). Despite the fast growth rate, the work isn’t done just yet.

This happens because there’s a preconceived notion among companies in Brazil about not sharing financial information (results or salaries) and avoiding the subject when it’s brought up. By comparing the companies recognized as Best Workplaces and those who weren’t, there are some clear evidence about this:

Those numbers indicate that there’s something very important in the Brazilian society, which spreads itself through the companies.

There’s not enough trust!

The taboo of keeping certain subjects away from the employee’s reach is a symptom of the general lack of trust in Brazilian organization. And that’s dangerous — we can see everyday examples of the mistrust: stocks plummet, whole economies become unstable, political riots and protests — in a nutshell, trust can be the difference between success and failure. This situation doesn’t change inside the organization.

It’s necessary to make the “ground rules” clear for everyone: what are the promotion criteria? Is there a reason for wage inequality for equal positions? Why is there a low employee profit share when the company seems to be doing so well and all goals were met?

Even if (and that’s a big if) the organization treats employees fairly across the board, refusing to share information or hiding criteria will always harm the trust relationship between employee and organization. After all, would you be able to trust someone who doesn’t trust you?

Employees who trust the companies they work for are engaged and satisfied employees, and there are a number of studies which prove this can boost an organization’s bottom line (there’s a really good example here).

Don’t throw a win-win situation away.