Like any other healthy relationship, it is important to maintain trust and honesty with your employees. You can develop trust among your employees with consistent actions that show how cooperative, reliable and committed you are to the success of the team. Remember- by fostering a sense of confidence in the workplace, you can encourage your employees to work together for a common goal.
Here are five simple steps to promote trust among your employees:
- Work closely with your team members – One of the best tricks to gain employee trust is to work together with your employees. Make sure that you are always available to them for answering their queries satisfactorily and participating in some daily activities. Observe each of them closely and try to figure out what drives them to perform. You should also note their areas of weaknesses as well, which would help you to come up with steps to improve their performance, thus ensuring that the jobs allotted to them are completed on time.
- Promote an honest culture at the workplace – It is important to maintain an open and respectful culture at your workplace as it helps your employees to perform peacefully, attentively and successfully. Since small businesses require people to work together in a small team, you should never tolerate disrespect or dishonest behavior, which is either directed towards you or to the other team members. Even when some of your employees disagree on a particular issue, make sure you are rigid with your stance and yet welcome constructive criticism from those who don’t agree with what you have proposed.
- Be consistent and fair – Be absolutely fair about the business goals and objectives. Remember – your employees have every right to know how their actions benefit or jeopardize the business in the long run. Discuss the problem areas openly so that they are aware of what is at stake and how important it is to improve their performances. Make sure you keep your promises and go by the company policies and other rules religiously.
- Don’t be biased – Avoid any sort of favoritism and never ignore the needs and concerns of your employees. Make sure to meet each of your employees regularly, where you ask them about their work in general and seek suggestions about what can be done in a better way, all the while trying to learn something about them. Try to involve your employees in some important decisions regarding your business to show that you respect and value their input.
- Be ready to sacrifice for bigger objectives – You should be ready to sacrifice for the greater good. This could involve drastic actions, such as a warning to a low performer or a nuisance maker in the form of a pay cut before the person is being laid off. Even acts like giving due credit to a star performer rather than hogging the limelight yourself and taking the credit for results can be crucial in fostering trust. The important thing is to make your employees understand that decisions you take are for the overall benefit for everyone, and not just for your own personal gains.
Along with these steps, you should also show your employees that you really care about heir future as well as the success and growth of the business. So, use these five steps to gain employee trust in a small business setup.
