7 Simple and Effective Ways You Can Build Trust in the Workplace

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There's no denying that trust is an essential component of not only our everyday lives but also if you want to build a healthy, productive and satisfied workplace. But building trust isn’t just for managers, it’s essential for everyone employed by an organisation, which is why it should be a priority for all organisations, no matter their size or industry, when you have a workforce that trusts you, you’ll no doubt see the impressive benefits in no time.

In this article, we will be looking at the importance of building workplace trust and also looking at different ways to create it.

The Importance of Building Workplace Trust

Trust is all about reliability and in the workplace, that’s no exception. All managers and leaders within an organisation must understand the importance of trust if they want to maintain high enthusiasm and retention among staff members. Workplace trust is all about your employees feeling they can be open and honest with their ideas and themselves, which includes:

• Your employees not feeling judged by members of the team - A trusting workplace is one where your employees don’t feel judged when they share their vulnerabilities and won’t face damaging consequences for being themselves.

• Transparent conversations - Workplace trust is about providing the opportunity for all employees to share their honest opinions with the team, without it having a negative impact. Trust is about the ability to have honest and healthy conversations with those around us.

• Workplace trust is when employees support each other - Supporting each other in our professional and personal lives is what we all should be doing. Workplace trust is about your employees feeling support when trying to achieve their goals and when they face any challenges in the workplace.

Now you understand more about what workplace trust means, let’s take a look at how building trust in the workplace can benefit your organisation as a whole. Some examples include:

• Stronger connections and relationships - When your employees trust leadership and their co-workers, they are more than likely going to develop stronger work and professional connections. Better relationships are highly advantageous for organisations as they result in things such as increased productivity, collaboration and teamwork. These are all incredibly important to building a successful organisation and positive workplace environment.

• Improved job satisfaction - As mentioned, trust is all about reliability. Something incredibly important for job satisfaction. When your employees feel that the organisation trusts them, values them and is reliable with their promises, then you will see an increase in job satisfaction across the board.

• Happier working environment - When your employees feel safe and welcomed in the workplace, you’ll end up with a happier working environment for all team members. A positive and thriving work environment is key to organisational success. If you want to ensure your employee's well-being is a priority, then you need to build trust.

• Improved productivity - One of the key benefits of trust in the workplace, is that when your employees feel they can trust their team, they will be more comfortable sharing new ideas when collaborating on projects because they know they won’t be judged. Innovation helps build a more effective team, where employees are as efficient as they can be.

• Higher retention rates - Are you struggling with employee retention even though you’ve done everything you can to improve it? Maybe, it’s due to a lack of trust. When your employees trust the organisation and their colleagues, they are more likely to stay with an organisation for a longer time. This leads to higher retention rates, which saves the organisation money and resources on further recruitment and training.

• Lower turnover rates - When employees trust their colleagues and managers, they are more likely to stay with the company long-term. This can lead to lower turnover rates, which can save the company time and money on recruitment and training.

These 5 impressive benefits showcase the importance of building trust in the workplace. Keep reading to discover 7 ways you can build trust in the workplace to help your organisation and employees thrive.

7 Simple Ways to Build Workplace Trust

Now you know the benefits and importance of building workplace trust, we will be revealing 7 simple ways you can build it. These include:

1. Leading by Example

If you want to build trust, then you need to be leading by example. Leadership plays an important role in ensuring the success of an organisation as well as building trust in the workplace. The fact is, that employees look to their managers for guidance and support, so leaders should be leading by example. If leadership within an organisation are acting in ways which go against the organisation's prime values, then it can harm trust among employees. Leaders need to be role models, behaving the way they want their employees to act. This includes being honest, having integrity and respect. When leaders continuously demonstrate these qualities, employees will follow.

2. Develop a Feedback Culture

Building trust can be done by creating a feedback culture. To create a feedback culture, you need to be able to give it, take it and be honest with the feedback you give to your team members. The more honest and constructive the feedback is, the higher chances of building trust among employees. When leadership within an organisation offers constructive feedback to their team, then employees respect the fact that their seniors are willing to point out ways they need to improve, instead of holding it against them. The same goes with employees giving feedback, it helps build trust when organisations actively act on the feedback they receive to improve processes, enabling the organisation and its employees to grow together.

3. Encourage Employee Interactions

Your employees should be able to build meaningful work relationships, without feeling like they're doing something wrong. Your employees are human, they spend most of their lives at work and should be able to interact with other employees. When your employees can bond, it helps build trust, engagement and job satisfaction. When you encourage employees to build connections, you’re building trust throughout all levels within the organisation, which in turn reflects positively on the organisation due to improved employee engagement and satisfaction.

4. Honour Your Commitments

Leadership within your organisation should be doing everything they can to honour their commitments and promises to their employees. They need to take the extra steps to get things done, if they’ve promised to do something, making sure they follow through with their words. As mentioned, leading by example is important and is even more crucial if you also want your employees to honour the commitments they’ve also made to other members of the team. To create trust, you need to be reliable, this is achieved by keeping promises and following through on what was said.

5. Encourage Collaboration

Although similar to encouraging employees to make connections, a simple way to build workplace trust is to encourage collaboration across all employees. Encouraging collaboration is a great way to build trust, when your employees work together, they are building essential teamwork skills, supporting and relying on each other. When you encourage collaboration, you’re not only helping develop trust in the workplace but also help build a supportive and collaborative work culture and environment, where your employees are willing to work together to share their knowledge and innovative ideas.

6. Communicate Effectively, Openly and Honestly

Open, honest and effective communication is one of the key factors in building workplace trust. All organisations need to be ensuring their employees to thwart their thoughts and ideas with the whole team, with leadership being willing to listen and respond actively. A sure way to erode trust is by hiding news and information from your employees if it will have a direct impact on them. Leadership needs to be transparent and honest about what is happening within an organisation, working alongside employees to help decide on solutions. Effective communication is also important as communication can easily damage trust with employees, communication needs to be done in a way that there isn’t room for misinterpretation.

7. Facilitate Mentoring and Coaching

Mentoring and coaching come with several benefits, but did you know they are a great way to build trust within a workplace? When you have mentoring, coaching or both in place, you need to ensure that not only are colleagues taking part but also leaders to buy in if you want to effectively build trust. Mentoring and coaching can build trust between employees because it can not only highlight teamwork but gives employees a shared goal to work towards. Mentoring and coaching also encourage knowledge sharing and helps build a supportive work culture. If you want to learn more about how mentoring and coaching programs can be used within your organisation, then book a free demonstration with a member of the PushFar team today.

Final Thoughts

There are so many ways to build trust within the workplace, with many being completely free and simple changes your employees can make. It should be noted that building trust doesn’t happen overnight, however, once you gain the trust of your employees and team members, then you’ll soon start noticing the incredible benefits associated with it.

Trust plays an important part in building a thriving workplace where employees feel supported and valued, which is why it’s incredibly important that all organisations, no matter their size or industry focus on building trust within their workforce.