How leaders can build trust with their employees

Building mutual trust between leaders and employees is important in the new hybrid working landscape. Find out how to demonstrate a culture of trust in the workplace with our expert advice.

Demonstrating trust in the workplace: Key insights

There are many benefits to demonstrating trust in your employees in the new era of work. You can experience improvements in these key areas especially:

• Engagement and morale
• Empowered workforce
• Autonomy and wellbeing
• Mutual trust

In order to gain the benefits of building trust with your team, here are six things you can do to demonstrate it:

• Allow your team to build a routine that works for them
• Invest in your employees’ learning and development
• Involve employees in your problem-solving conversations
• Don’t blame your team for failures or mistakes
• Monitor to help, not punish
• Think and act like a collective

Discover more detail on how to build and demonstrate trust within your team.

Explore our market insight blog to find the latest advice for employers.

Demonstrating trust in the workplace: Background

The Covid-19 crisis changed the world of work forever. A variety of new priorities have risen from our new era of work and among them is the mutual trust between the employee and the employer. As working arrangements now include more hybrid working, it’s never been more important for leaders to demonstrate their trust in their team members. If your working environment suffers from a lack of trust, you might face difficulties in motivating and retaining your team.

So, how can leaders build and demonstrate trust in the workplace and what are the benefits? We’ve gathered our insights and top tips for you below.

The benefits of demonstrating trust in your employees

Put simply by Dr Dennis. Reina et al., “teams do not perform well without trust.” Trust is a vital ingredient in any team, no matter what challenges and disruption they’re going through. Showing your people that you trust them will improve your team dynamics and bring a multitude of other benefits, including:

Engagement and team morale

Maintaining morale can be difficult, not least when teams work remotely. Melinda Starbird, Vice President of People and Culture at Auth0, explains: “when employees feel valued and vested, they are part of something bigger and work for the benefit of the company, not just for themselves as individuals”. So, as hybrid teams are now the norm, employers need to devote time to build trust in creative ways to boost motivation and morale.

A sense of empowerment

If an employee feels as though their manager trusts them and has full faith that they will continue to be productive wherever they work from, they will feel empowered. And employee empowerment isn’t only essential for improving how confident, respected and proud your employees feel. Empowering your team is imperative in the new era of work. Business models are continuously changing, so it’s important that employees feel empowered to deliver those changes.

Harvard Business Review discussed how employee empowerment has also been proven to lead to stronger job performance, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organisation.

A feeling of autonomy and improved wellbeing

Autonomy is one of our basic psychological needs. Autonomy is about having freedom, influence and control over what we are doing. Trusting your employees to control their own working days and decide how they will spend their time provides them with this vital feeling of autonomy.

Mutual trust

As explained in a Harvard Business Review article: “trust begets trust. When people are trusted, they tend to trust in return. But people must feel trusted to reciprocate trust.” Trust is a key ingredient to building a strong and respectful working relationship.

However, you must remember that it isn’t enough to only know in your own mind that you trust your team members. You need to clearly demonstrate this to them, by following the below six steps.

Six ways to show your team that you trust them

1. Provide your employees with the autonomy to carve out a routine that works for them

The new world of work has normalised flexible schedules and working locations, so allow your team some freedom to decide what works for them where possible.

Our Hays UK Director Karen Young said: “[as] long as the work gets done, it doesn’t matter when it happens. After all, performance isn’t judged on how long someone sits at their desk each day, it’s judged on the output produced and value delivered.” Flexible working arrangements will demonstrate to your employees that you trust their decision making. Providing them with a degree of autonomy shows that you know that they will complete their work, regardless of when or where this happens.

2. Invest in your employees’ learning and development

Make a continuous effort to reflect on your team’s skills. Explore how your individual employees could be upskilling in order to develop their own careers, and to future-proof your team for the changing demands of the new era of work.

As Harvard Business Review put it: “letting employees know you are willing to invest in their potential and advocate for them conveys confidence and trust”. William Craig, founder and president of WebFX, also believes in the benefits that investing in employee learning can have. He comments that this investment in their development will help employees feel valued and trust their employer, making them less likely to move to another company.

So, take steps to create personalised development plans for each member of your team. Dedicate time to researching training opportunities that will aid your employees in reaching their goals. Additionally, helping your team to develop will also feed into the feeling of empowerment.

Find out more about the employee training opportunities that we offer.

3. Involve employees in your problem-solving conversations

Whatever your challenges may be at work, when looking for solutions or creative new ideas, ask your team for their opinions. Involving their input in problem-solving will show them that you value their ideas and trust their judgement.

Involving your employees in decision-making will also help to keep them informed of how the business may be changing. Allowing two-way communication will help to develop your team’s trust in you as a manager and improve their motivation.

4. Don’t blame your team for failures or mistakes

In today’s fast-evolving world of work, you need to ensure that your employees feel comfortable and trusted when taking on new challenges. So, you should encourage confidence and an optimistic mindset, with no reason to fear failure. Ensuring that your team knows they will not be punished or blamed if something doesn’t quite go to plan will highlight your trust in them.

Creating a ‘blame’ or ‘call-out’ culture will not make your employees feel trusted. Instead, it will make them feel fearful and anxious about slipping up, building a risk-averse culture that will not serve your organisation well in the future. So, make it clear to your people that any failures or mistakes are merely growth and learning opportunities. As a result, your team will feel confident in themselves, knowing that you trust them to push themselves out of their comfort zones and explore their potential.

5. Monitor to help, not punish

Developing technology enables employers to track workers in far more invasive ways, opening up an ethical minefield. “Unless [employee monitoring] is done to the exacting high standards of ethical practice, there is a risk it can drive a wedge of distrust between employees and employers,” says Rob McCargow, UK Director of Artificial Intelligence at PwC. There may be a strong business case for monitoring, but employers should be transparent and give staff a say on what and how data is collected, and how it’s used.

Thomas Kochan, Co-Director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research in Massachusetts, recommends that leaders should be open about the problem they want to solve through monitoring. He says: “share the data with the workforce so they can validate it and put it to work.” Otherwise, organisations run the risk of losing the trust of staff and damaging their mental health.

Some employers have taken monitoring too far entirely. In one infamous example, Barclays installed a monitoring system that tracked how long investment bank staff in London spent at their desks and warned people who took breaks for too long. Barclays axed the system in 2020 after a backlash from employees and criticism from privacy campaigners and HR experts.

So, ensure that any employee monitoring that you may partake in is legal, transparent, and benefits your employees too.

6. Think and act like a collective

As good as technology is in bringing us together to collaborate effectively in a hybrid working model, it’s possible that your team members could be feeling a little isolated. So, it’s important that you as a leader make it clear in everything that you do that you are one team – not a group of individuals.

For example, when presenting or discussing your work within the business, use pronouns such as “we” and “us” to show your employees that you are a team. A team where every member’s contribution is valued. Using this type of language will also highlight that you recognise the work your team does and how it all adds to the wider picture of what you produce together. Demonstrating your belief in your people will communicate that you trust their value and input into the team.

Demonstrating trust in the workplace: Next steps

Discover our work transition tool kit to learn more about the key aspects of the new world of work.