If building trust at work were easy, we’d see more happy workers and more successful companies. The exchange of trust is a delicate dance between the company and the worker and can vary by the person. To help us understand what today’s workers need from their companies and leaders, we turn to Dr. Michelle P. King, with an excerpt from her book How Work Works.
There are numerous academic definitions of trust, each of which can be boiled down to one thing—predictability. We trust people when their behavior is consistent, and we can accurately predict how they will behave. We trust our workplaces and the people we work with when we know how they will likely behave, and we believe they act with our best interests in mind. When you decide to join a company, uncertainty and risk are involved in making the upfront commitment. You need to trust your hard work will be met with financial rewards and opportunities for promotion.
But the trust exchange does not only involve these tangible benefits; when we invest in a company, we also want to be met with approval, support, career fulfillment, meaning, and belonging. When we receive these intangible benefits, it is evident that your workplace is trustworthy, so you should continue investing your time in it. Trust begets trust.
Everyone needs to uphold their end of the bargain for the trust exchange to work. After all, trust links people to their environment and one another. To belong, we must trust our workplace and the people we work with.
10 questions around trust at work
If you want to know whether your employees trust their workplace, take a moment to consider the following questions:
- Do you know how employees are expected to behave at work, and do these behaviors make you feel included, respected, and accepted for who you are?
- Do you feel comfortable freely expressing your feelings?
- Are disagreements in your organization discussed openly?
- Do you trust the competence and capability of the people you work with?
- Are you willing to voice your opinions, raise questions, and share your ideas?
- Do you feel you can be yourself rather than hiding or changing who you are to try and fit in at work?
- Do you feel included in informal social groups or networks at work?
- Do you feel you know what is happening at work and have access to the informal information you need to do your job?
- Do you believe that your organization is committed to your development and that you can access opportunities to learn and grow?
- Do you believe your coworkers are willing to support and advocate for your career advancement?
If the answer to some or all of these questions is no, workers don’t fully trust your workplace. Unfortunately, the bad news is a lot of people don’t trust the people they work with. According to a 2020 Edelman survey of thirty-three thousand people in over twenty-eight countries, one in three people do not trust their employer.
Building trust by reading the air
A workplace that does not trust employees will likely have an overabundance of rules, policies, and procedures. Research finds that low levels of trust in workplaces increase bureaucracy and, in turn, limit employees’ creativity, individual accountability, innovation, and proactivity. But a workplace that trusts its employees will likely have fewer rules and policies. In a high-trust organization, employees are more likely to feel like they belong, which means they’re more likely to share information, admit mistakes, collaborate effectively, and support one another’s career ambitions.
Reading the air is how we build trust at work. Reading the air is necessary because workplaces are becoming less formalized and more democratic, requiring a high degree of trust to navigate. A 2017 study examining the future of work found that, increasingly, organizations are becoming self-managing, autonomous teams, and informal. Decision-making is becoming more decentralized. Importantly, individual performance is no longer determined by your achievements alone; instead, your performance will be assessed by your team. Your coworkers, rather than your manager, will review and collectively decide your annual performance rating. This assessment will be based on how well you can work with your coworkers, how much they trust you, and vice versa.
From the book: How Work Works by Michelle P. King. Copyright © 2023 by Michelle P. King. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Dr. Michelle P. King is an award-winning academic and globally recognized expert on inequality and organizational culture.