How Disabled Employees Lose Trust with their Employers

Trust has to be the highest value in your company, and if it’s not, something bad is going to happen to you. -?Marc Benioff

The success of an organization depends in large part on their employee performance. To achieve success, it's essential for business leaders to establish a solid relationship with their employees built on a foundation of trust. Trustworthy relationships are critical to building productive teams successfully working towards achieving common goals.

Supervisors are the most frequent contact point between organizational management and an employee. They play a crucial role in building trust and maintaining a healthy work environment. However, there are certain behaviors and actions that can break the trust between a supervisor and their employees, which may lead to overall distrust of the organization. They include:

1. Not being transparent: Lack of transparency in communication and decision-making can cause employees to feel undervalued and ignored. What a neurodivergent person needs in "communication transparency" might be different than what other employees need.
2. Micromanagement: Supervisors watching over their employees' every move, blocking autonomy or decision-making, can lead to frustration and a lack of motivation. For someone with attention deficit disorder, the constant interruption of micromanagement can impede their productivity. Micromanagement can also worsen the feelings of imposter syndrome which plague women and people with disabilities .
3. Failing to deliver on promises: Broken promises lead to a loss of trust. If supervisors make commitments to their employees and then fail to follow through, it can create distrust and even anger. When words are disconnected with actions, that is a failure to deliver on promises, If a leader says accessibility is their number one priority, followed by a series of inaccessible meetings, that leader's words are no longer trustworthy to a disabled employee excluded by these actions because the leader has failed to deliver on their words.
4. Difficult to navigate processes: Bureaucratic red-tape affects all employees, but some areas in particular disproportionately impact employees with disabilities. Having to repeatedly request accommodations, wait for months for an answer, being forced to disclose private health details in medical letters that are expensive and time consuming to obtain -- all of these lead to a lack of trust that the employer actually cares about being inclusive of people with disabilities.
5. Inflexibility: Workplace inflexibility can create significant barriers for people with disabilities, limiting their work opportunities and creating additional challenges for them to navigate. This can include cookie-cutter accommodations, inability to work flexible hours, lack of work from home opportunities, or the lack of consideration of mental health-related disabilities
6. Lack of Fairness: Work environments where people with disabilities are receiving negative feedback on actions related to their disability when accommodations have been difficult to get or denied, is a highly frustrating experience and one that destroys trust between the employee and the organization. When discriminatory acts are tolerated, trust is non-existent.

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose

Trust is built and maintained by many small actions over time. -?Lolly Daskal

Trust is a like a window that a single well-thrown pebble can shatter. It takes a significant amount of time and effort to build trust, but it only take a single action to destroy it. Once trust is broken, it can be challenging to regain. Broken trust can result in a loss of productivity, employee turnover, and even public damage to the employer's reputation.

Trust, loyalty, and respect are a three-legged stool.

Lose one leg, and the stool falls over.

Trust is earned, respect is given, and loyalty is demonstrated. Betrayal of any one of those is to lose all three. – Ziad K. Abdelnour

When supervisors demonstrate integrity, transparency, and reliability, employees are more likely to trust that leaders. Trust can be shared - if the trusted leader exhibits trust for a second leader, trust in the second leader is implied.

Trust requires consistent behavior and honesty, and eventually leads to loyalty. When employees experience support and fulfillment in their roles, they are more likely to stay committed to the organization even during challenging times. Loyal employees are driven to work towards their organization’s goals and will advocate for the company's interests. Respect occurs when a relationship has both trust and loyalty. Respect is essential to maintain healthy relationships between employees, employers, and customers, fostering the development of a

Without Trust, there is no Psychological Safety. Without Psychological Safety, there is no Innovation

“We thrive in environments that respect us and allow us to (1) feel included, (2) feel safe to learn, (3) feel safe to contribute, and (4) feel safe to challenge the status quo.?- Timothy Clark

“Without trust there’s no way that any organization can sustain innovation. Because without trust no one is willing to take the risks that innovation require.” - Dennis Stauffer

Trust allows employees to voice concerns, share innovative ideas, and engage in constructive feedback because trust reduces the barrier to these actions. An employee that trusts their co-workers and leadership does not worry about backlash from a critical comment or failed idea. Psychological safety based on trust will improve an organization's success and make them more competitive in the marketplace through innovation.

Conclusion

Without trust, at best you get compliance. -?Jesse Lyn Stoner

Trust is a fundamental value that plays a crucial role in building healthy relationships between employers and employees. Trust promotes loyalty and respect which can lead to increased productivity, improved job satisfaction, and an enterprise's overall success. Approaching disability inclusion as a check box exercise will destroy trust with disabled employees as will DEI/JEDI/IDEA/DEIA efforts without real disability inclusion.

In a world where employees have many choices on where to work, trust is vital to attracting and retaining top talent. Its importance cannot be overstated.

• Trust is a value that must be prioritized at all levels of the organization.
• Trust requires continuous effort and investment to maintain.

Employees with disabilities want to see open communication, active listening, real responses to expressed concerns, transparency, and fairness pertaining specifically to actions that involve the employee's disability. Without these trustworthy actions, employers will not have a culture of trust with their disabled employees, and their performance and reputation may be negatively impacted whether or not they realize it.