Suzanne Bates at Bates Communications has written an informative article about trust as the number one crucial issue to maintain business coming out of recession. Bates Communication has surveyed 148 organisations and the acknowledgement of trust shortfall is startling. This view is supported by other work found in the Midyear Edelman Trust Barometer.

Suzanne clearly identifies the need for communication, reassurance and building trustworthiness in leaders. She also talks about trust in relation to customers, but as I know next to nothing about that I’m going to confine my comments to employee trust. I’d like to build on Suzanne’s by thinking about the question – “Building Trust in Businesses is Essential to Maintain the Recovery – OK But how do you do that?”

Communication is often cited as being important for leaders, particularly at difficult times with honesty and transparency being key qualities. However a quick reflection on businesses-that-we-have-known that have been in difficulty

• have managers been able to tell staff that the ship is in trouble?
• if redundancies are unavoidable, can leaders talk about openly as soon as it is mooted?
• if a takeover is on the cards, is the receptionist likely to hear only the day after the CEO?
• does the board want to tell the middle manager as soon as they know that things are falling apart?

The answer strikes me as “no” – and even those staff most affected would agree that leaders need to do a bit of thinking before passing on their worries to staff. Everyone concerned would want to know that leaders were

• just doing a bit of thinking, taking stock, checking out each other’s perspectives
• conducting some sort of risk assessment, how bad are things? What are the trends
• considering what could be done immediately which may avert the worst whilst maintaining a healthy businessIf things are really bad enough and a timely decision made to tell staff, for their benefit and that of the business
• a plan to talk to staff, with relevant people present, maybe and groups and one to one, to include a clear and realistic assessment of the likely future
• time to allow information to sink in a bit
• managers available to ask questions, share worries (it’s all too easy to hide behind the door when things are tricky and there’s grief flying around…)
• chance to air and hear ideas from staff, about possible ways forward
• sharing a plan for future communication, including levels of certainty

 It’s also important that leaders understand that while they take responsibility for communication – the definition of its success is entirely in the hands of the staff. In the middle of a restructure in one organisation I was working with, staff complained that no senior managers had visited a particular site. I was facilitating a meeting where these managers were throwing open their diaries to show that they had indeed been there! Tough banana – if people feel that you haven’t been there, you haven’t.

Top Executives to take control of the Trust Issue – that’s great but let’s remember here that people stay in jobs, and carry on working hard in difficult times because of their colleagues. The old adage is that employees leave managers but stay for colleagues. Building trust between colleagues is easier (because much if it is already there and they see each other a lot) and arguable more valuable than managers trying and perhaps failing to engender trust, particularly when they may have to say something different next week in response to some understandable business need.

Reassurance – I don’t know but on the eve of a UK election I wouldn’t want to reassure anyone about anything. The future is uncertain and probably pretty bleak. It may be more useful for leaders to reassure their staff about their role – realistically. To kick ass, to close everything down if the business is unsustainable but also to support and listen to stuff, as sharing a much as reasonable for the benefit of employees and the business

Communicating Strategy – tbh I don’t think that people understand strategy. I don’t. Unless it is translated effectively in a way that I understand and makes a difference to me and mine it just looks like something in a posh document. Leaders need to be able to see things for a range of perspectives and humbly accept that this well thought through strategy has little reference to people at the coal face – who (thank god) will understand working hard together to dig coal.

A long post people and I’m sorry. I will post some ideas about how these touch conversations can take place between leaders and employees – need a glass of wine now, even though I – ahem – don’t drink during the week.

: – )  Phil

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