The Trust Series: Building trust at work

March 18, 2021 | Workforce Management

In the previous blogs, we explored:

1. How trust affects productivity and effectiveness within the organisation.

2. Productivity and effectiveness are often a common denominator to innovation and morale.

Most will agree that trust is a necessary ingredient for highly productive teams, so the next logical question is how do you build it?

Be honest and supportive

Even when the truth is difficult to hear, your co-workers deserve constructive feedback based on facts and logic. At the same time, you also need to be sensitive to their feelings and use constructive criticism when necessary.

For your team to do their best work, they should feel supported. Mistakes will happen, but your team needs to feel comfortable sharing problems with you in confidence. By being supportive and honest, you can establish trust in the workplace.

Practice what you preach

Build accountability into everything you do and be consistent. Everyone makes mistakes, but it is what happens next that matters the most.

When you take accountability and be transparent, trust follows naturally.

You can encourage an honest dialogue and foster accountability by building in processes that become part of the culture, such as an evaluation of every project (positives, negatives, things to change) or a status report and next steps in each meeting agenda (tracking deadlines and milestones).

Trust takes time and effort to build

Trust must be earned. It comes from conscious effort to walk your talk, keep your promises and align your behavior with your values. Building trust is worth the effort because once trust is lost, it can be very difficult to recover.

Protect your employees and have their best interest at heart will play an imperative role in solidifying a foundation of trust.

Other blogs in The Trust Series:

Want to find out more? Please get in touch with Tom.

Tom Murphy is Head of Workforce Management at Mirus Australia and with his team, they are optimising staff coverage to the care needs of a provider’s residents, minimising the complexity of interpreting awards and integrating technology for improved financial sustainability in aged care.

Strength in numbers. Is the short answer. Please get in touch with us to find out more about Mirus Works! or please connect with Tom via LinkedIn