5 Ways to improve trust and value | Employee Integrity

Working with people from different backgrounds can be challenging, especially if you don’t trust easily. Nevertheless, trust is important if our personal or professional relationships are to grow. With trust, mountains of opportunities will be open to us, and people will be more willing to recommend us. 

In the workplace, leaders and team members can delegate crucial tasks to us, contributing to our professional growth. Nevertheless, trust doesn’t grow from thin air. It has to be earned and built. Creating a business environment where trust and authentic and empathic relationships are built requires a trustworthy leader. 

Building trust requires being dependable, equitable, and consistent as a leader. You must show support for your team members by exuding empathy and humanity.

By balancing the need for results with being considerate, your team will trust you, and you’ll be able to engage and retain top talents. Trust is necessary for your colleagues to be willing to voice their ideas or proffer alternate solutions to problems. 

If team members feel valued and trusted, they go above and beyond for the company. They make achieving the company’s goals a personal task. Trusting and valuing your employees also limits workers’ rate of leaving the job. 

Happy employees are more likely to grow your business and get the desired results. Above all, it also creates equity and builds strong relationships in the workplace.

Interestingly, creating equity in the workplace will help employees feel trusted and valued. Improving trust and value in the workplace only requires that you;

Be Transparent

By being transparent, you encourage honest conversations, collaborations, and views. It also helps to diminish the mystery and mistrust that might prevent team members from voicing their opinions. To be transparent, you must consistently do what you said you’d do. 

Suppose you are being transparent only when you feel like it. You cannot build trust. In fact, it drives team members away from you and breeds mistrust in the workplace. To be a trustworthy leader, you must mean what you say and be empathic. 

Take Action

Good-intentioned leaders often solicit feedback, but they usually need help working on that feedback. It is not enough to request that employees or clients take time to complete surveys or suggest changes that will improve the organization. If those suggestions and complaints are not worked on, it’s not going to bear any fruits.

If employees notice that their complaints or suggestions are being ignored, they’ll lose respect and trust for the manager. Conversely, you can improve your team’s trust by thanking them for their contributions and helping them understand why you made a certain decision or didn’t tow a certain line. 

Be Empathic

Empathy simply means putting yourself in another’s shoes. As a business leader, showing your team members that their feelings are valid and that you hear them boosts their trust. If you sincerely care about your team members and ask about their well-being, they’ll feel valued and translate those feelings to the workplace. This will naturally translate into more output for the company.

Take Responsibility

Business leaders tend to forget that they are humans too, and are prone to mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable, and there is no way to escape them. Many leaders seem to think that they are invincible. So when they inevitably make mistakes, they blame a team member or find an excuse.

Not being able to take responsibility for your actions diminishes the respect and trust your team has in you. How can they trust you if you turn on one of them tomorrow when your decision backfires? Also, your behavior will lead them to hide or deny their mistakes, which could be costly for the company.

Celebrate Achievements

Employees feel valued when their contributions are recognized and celebrated. When a team member does a remarkable job, meets a target, or brings a lead that opens up a profitable market, sending memos indicating what the team member has done and appreciating their effort will make the team member feel valued and part of the work family. 

Such recognition will also motivate other employees to do more so they can be celebrated. Celebrating your team members also means that you appreciate and value their input. It also creates a working relationship based on trust between you and them. 

Final Thoughts

The importance of trust in the workplace cannot be overemphasized; however, it is crucial to remember that trust is not built overnight. It’s a process. You need to be transparent and consistent as a business leader. 

When the work environment lacks trust, the team members either quit the job or refuse to put in the maximum effort required. Consequently, the company suffers from it, as unhappy and unvalued employees do not make great team members. 

However, applying the tips discussed above will improve the level of trust in your workplace and increase productivity.