Why trust matters
And how to revive it in the workplace
The UK was recently labelled one of the ‘least trusting’ countries, scoring just 39/100 on the Edelman Trust Barometer. The likes of Sweden, the US and South Africa suffered similarly low scores. ?
Edelman’s report examines faith in both the government and businesses, identifying general distrust and scepticism towards authority figures.
Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise. ?
Today’s workplace is experiencing more change than ever before, with frequent restructuring, changes to processes and technology, and the enduring remote work debate putting pressure on employers and employees alike. ?
What’s more, questionable conduct by organisations towards their employees no longer spreads by word of mouth, but rather by viral moments. ?
Employees at Cloudflare and Discord filmed their virtual layoffs and uploaded them to social media, sparking debate over whether blame lies in the nature of the redundancies or the decision to leak them. ?
Meanwhile, a decidedly bizarre video emerged showing the CEO of Web MD attempting to persuade his employees of the benefits of in-person work in tones that vacillate between mocking and mildly threatening.
You might question what would prompt someone to leak an internal video to the worldwide web or cause one of those videos in the first place, and general ‘bad egg’ behaviour might be your first assumption. ?
But what we’re really looking at here is a breakdown in trust between employers and their people.
Without strong relationships in place across your workforce, trust begins to falter and serious issues emerge. ?
We’re not just talking about low morale and engagement, but stifled productivity and innovation, too. ?
We’ve pulled together a handful of resources to help you repair trust and build relationships in your organisation. ?
As always, we’d be more than happy to dive deeper into these topics over a virtual coffee.?
Is your employee engagement survey still serving you?
Given we’ve just been talking about viral virtual redundancies, it’s fair to say the modern workplace is unrecognisable from what it was 20 or 30 years ago.
We’ve since come to recognise organisations as dynamic and evolving. We know them to be complex and diverse social systems, rather than linear, machine-like entities.
And yet, the primary tool for measuring and improving employee engagement remains the same – the survey.
But is it still the best tool in your arsenal? ?
Why you need to build workplace relationships to win trust and influence
"The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. Your business is no different." Harvey Mackay
Employee engagement is a relationship-building process.
The interactions you have with your people can make or break trust and establish the quality of your relationships, impacting engagement, productivity and morale.
领英推荐
Our Head of Engagement, Wendy Firlotte, uses a straightforward model first developed by Dr Gordon Neufeld to explain the six essential stages for building relationships at scale in the workplace. ?
It's time to revive trust
You know your employees are essential to the success of your business, yet disengagement continues to impact your bottom line.
This free eBook shows you how to leverage live employee feedback to rebuild trust and strengthen team bonds.
It outlines a practical, data-driven approach that turns listening into your organisation’s superpower, so you can cultivate a culture where trust and engagement drive success.
Harkn Academy webinar: Moving fast, fixing things and building trust
On March 21st, our Founder & CEO David Bellamy will be leading a Harkn Academy webinar all about this topic.
‘Move fast and break things’ was Mark Zuckerberg’s mantra at Facebook and Meta. To quote Zuckerberg: “Unless you’re breaking things, you’re not moving fast enough.”
We disagree with this approach, because it risks breaking two things that are absolutely critical to your business success: people and trust.
David will invite you to consider an alternative approach; one that considers the many improvement opportunities that exist every day inside our organisations.
The session will explore how the listening organisation can instead move fast, fix things and build trust.
This webinar will support you in creating a more responsive, engaged, and trusting workplace where every voice can help shape meaningful action.
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