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Manager’s Role in Building Trust at Work

Trust is the foundation of every strong team. It’s what cultivates a positive culture and generates results. For the company’s success, it’s never about one person’s effort, but always about team’s. 

Employees’ performance, creativity and teamwork - it all depends on trust built within the company. After all, employees won’t stick around for long in an environment they don’t feel comfortable in, or  surrounded by managers whom they don’t trust. 

However, trust is a common issue in the workspace. According to the “Trust Barometer” survey, one in three workers doesn’t trust their employer. It means you have quite a difficult task in front of you if you aim to build a culture of trust inside your company. Here are a few things you have to consider when working towards this goal.

Building Trust Takes Time and Effort

Trust takes time to build, but can be shattered by a single act. Once lost, it’s difficult, if not impossible to recover. You have to be aware that trust within your team won’t build overnight. You have to work constantly towards creating a trustworthy culture.

Be Transparent

Transparency is all about being honest and setting clear expectations. Without that, your employees tend to make up their own “truth” about things – if you don’t address their mistakes, they’ll think it’s ok to do the same mistake again. On the other hand, if you tend to forget to appraise them for a job well done, they’ll believe you aren’t content with the results. 

A culture of transparency is built through regular feedback. That means giving both positive and negative feedback when needed. Don’t forget, you shouldn’t fret from giving negative feedback – when given appropriately, it’s constructive advice on how to change something that doesn’t work, and not a critic of their unsatisfactory deliverables. The main focus should be on finding a different approach that will work in that situation.

Be considerate of your team’s efforts, and provide them with regular recognition where available. A study conducted by Globoforce shows that employees who receive recognition from their managers are significantly more likely to trust them. 

If you want them to continue doing a good job, you have to let them know they’re on the right track. Give them credit where credit’s due, especially during a presentation. Show your (potential) clients you work as a team, and your team members put in nothing less work than you do. A regular appraisal is, according to many surveys, one of the top motivators in the workspace. It drives their engagement and leads to higher productivity.

Show Them You Care

Get personal. To build trust, you have to show your employees you value them as people, not just as your workers. In order to do that, learn more about them personally. Consider creating after work gatherings every now and then. Use that time to bond with them over things that aren’t work-related. Talk about hobbies, tastes and other personal things that aren’t obvious through office interactions. Connecting with your team members on a personal level will make them feel more comfortable opening up to you, as they’ll understand that you’re just as human as they are.

Respect Everyone

One of the main qualities of a great manager is good listening skills. Show your employees you respect their time and opinion. Encourage them to express their concerns and ideas. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. It’s okay to have different opinions on the same matter, but letting them express their thoughts builds up trust and creates a culture of team work where you work towards a solution through discussion.

Be Consistent

You can’t expect your employees to trust you if you change your mind like the wind changes its course. One of the key elements of trust is consistency.

Build-in Accountability

The accountable team is the one that takes responsibility and accounts for the consequences of their actions, and that’s a crucial quality to nurture, as it means you can rely on each other to provide satisfactory work. 

Without accountability, you’re left with a team whose members lay the blame from one to another, trying to avoid taking any responsibility for their choices. If you can’t rely on your team, then what’s the point of having a team then?

Be Considerate When Using Technology

Nowadays, the office is all about new technology implementation, we all get that. The capitalist system requires you to always be up to date and use all available tools to analyze and further improve your workflow. Therefore, you’re probably using some kind of project and time management apps in your company. While they provide you with deep insight into your overall productivity and automation saves you a lot of time and energy, they tend to create an environment of mistrust if not implemented correctly. 

Employees tend to dread from time clock management systems and similar apps that measure their work. Their main worry about using time tracking application is you’ll reduce them to numbers, and value more the hours they work from results they make. But, as much as such technology can destroy trust, it can also improve it, and that depends solely on your approach.

Show them how work tracking tools can help them with time management and future project estimations. What’s more, it can improve employee accountability as they’re responsible for how they spend their time, but also their productivity as they’re focused on a specific task. 

Lead by Example 

Nothing speaks louder about company culture than the leader’s behavior. If you expect your employees to show a certain standard, you have to set it first. It’s almost like parenting. You refrain from doing all those adult stuff in front of them because you don’t want them to pick up such behavior and think it’s appropriate. The same goes for your employees. If you’re not taking accountability for your work, you don’t trust or respect your teammates, then why would you expect them to do that?

In Conclusion 

Trust doesn’t fall from the blue sky. A culture of trust in your workplace is built one step at a time through your every action and interaction with your employees. 

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The Challenges and Advantages of Remote Work

Do we really need to sit in an office from 9 to 5, 5 days a week? We don’t. This kind of schedule has proven to not work for everyone. More and more companies are offering flexibility at work, and most of us are wondering if remote working is our future too.

Being your own lord of the schedule sounds great, but working remotely poses certain challenges, both for employer and employees, and these should be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not a team should go remote.

Challenges of Remote Work

Communication

This one I’ll address first, as I find it to be the most common cause of all other remote management issues. When communication fails, everything else starts crumbling down.

Both remote and in-office teams are susceptible to having communication issues. But, when we deal with such problem face-to-face, we’re able to analyze the root of the problem and find a solution. On the other hand, with remote teams it’s commonly assumed the distance is the root of communication issues, and therefore we don’t work towards fixing the problem, as there’s nothing we can do about it.

Communication issues are even bigger when a part of the team works in-office, but some employees don’t. This often causes them to feel isolated, because they’re missing out on juicy office gossip.

Time zones present yet another issue when it comes to communicating. It’s difficult to stay in the loop with coworkers who start working when you go to bed. Your communication then has to revolve around using slow communication methods like emails. Ultimately, it means that resolving issues with them might take a long amount of time, which could have been used more productively.

Engagement and Trust

These two are built upon human interaction. However, it’s difficult to connect to someone you don’t really know. Let’s be realistic – you probably can’t show off your great personality through Slack. Nor can video conference make up to all those missed office chit-chats.

Trust is the foundation of employee engagement, and ultimately, team performance. My claims are backed up by Gallop's research on the qualities of the best leaders. Trust is the factor that topped the list. Here’s what they say at Gallup:

“When employees don’t trust organizational leadership, their chances of being engaged are one in 12. But when that trust is established, the chances of engagement skyrocket to better than one in two. That’s more than a six-fold increase.”

Let’s look at it this way – as a remote employee, it’s easy to see your work as simply a tool to pay your bills. However, this can’t last for long. Being so disconnected from work will eventually get you sick of it. In order to be able to succeed long-term within the company, engagement is a must.

Physical separation poses a great barrier to building a team spirit. For virtual teams, it has proven useful to organize, at least annually, a team-building gathering, where employees have the chance to interact in person and bond.

Overworking

This might come as a surprise. Many managers dream from remote working because they picture their employees slacking away when free of their oversight. But the truth is quite the opposite – remote workers are way more likely to overwork. The reason behind that is the difficulty in separating work and life.

First of all, leaving work behind is much easier when working in an office. You have a billion small tasks every day, and when the clock ticks 5 PM and everyone gets up and starts packing, it’s easy to just leave it up for tomorrow. But when your office is your home, it becomes difficult to simply switch off. You feel like you just want to finish that small task now and make tomorrow an easier workday, which never happens, because another task just like that one will always come up. And then you’re stuck in a loop of doing just-one-more-thing before calling it a day.

Another reason why it’s difficult to simply end a workday when working from home is the need to show productivity to your company. Remote workers often feel like their performance isn’t as visible as their in-office counterparts’ is, just because they don’t always see the bigger picture and priorities. This ends up in them working way more hours than their colleagues working .

Time Management

When working remotely, employees have to manage their own work time, which can get difficult with all life events going on. Like previously mentioned, it’s no easy task separating work and office hours. For some, one text or a glance at a TV screen leads to another, and before they know it’s evening and they have nothing to present at the end of the day. Eventually, it results in many sleepless nights trying to finish up what’s due, but all that could have been avoided with just a bit better organization.

However, in many remote companies, this issue is addressed through different management tools. There are a lot of project organizing applications that allow teams to keep track of what they’re working on. Some companies even use employee time tracker software, which gives a manager an insight into tasks and projects employees are working on, and time spent on them. My company uses Workpuls and this time tracking tool has proven to be especially useful with remote teams, as it creates transparency of work between employer and employees. On one hand, employers know if their workers do what they’re paid for or not. On the other hand, employees have solid proof of their work, so they can avoid overworking.

Distractions

Whether it’s your family, your pet, or a DHL guy in need of your signature, working from home is full of disturbances. On one hand, you’re free from office gossipers or loud-typing colleagues, but you’re facing another range of home distractions, which can be even worse.

It can be really difficult with family members going on about their days, watching loud TV shows and yelling at each other without realizing you’re working. It gets even more challenging with small kids, when you have to tell them you “don’t have time for that now.” Ouch.

Bad Health Habits

It’s obvious how this is one of the remote working problems. First of all – the fridge is close. It might be 2 steps away or it might be 40, nonetheless, it’s close enough to be a regular break destination. For many of us, it just seems too time-consuming to stop work in order to prepare a cooked meal. It usually ends up making sandwiches and eating snacks just to preserve some time. For some it’s quite the opposite – I know many remote workers who simply forget to eat while working. In both cases, we have created bad eating habits from working from home.

Another thing we tend to forget when switching from office to remote is comfort. Sure, the house is comfy, but is it comfy enough to work around 8 hours? Sitting on a sofa or on a counter with a laptop might not appear so uncomfortable, but I’ll ask you again in a year of bad-posture-sitting. We tend to forget why our office chairs are expensive. We’ll probably remember that when our physiotherapist bill comes.

Ultimately, stretching out workday between actually working and slacking doing unimportant things ends up in forgetting to go outside enough. Feeling that lack of vitamin D yet?

Advantages of Remote Work

However, those issues don’t seem unsolvable. When addressed from the beginning, they shouldn’t be an issue, especially when keeping in mind the benefits that remote work brings.

Productive Workforce

It’s finally widely accepted that keeping employees under close watch from 9 to 5 is the key for a productive team is false. No matter how much one might love their job, going to the office every day where an ever-watchful boss eye follows your every move can be demotivating, to say the least.

The fact is, remote work increases productivity. Some of us are night owls, and some are more morning birds. What’s more, I like to work with a music background, while I’m sure most of the office colleagues won’t share that enjoyment. Working remotely allows everyone to tailor workday to suit their ideal atmosphere, whether it’s a dark room or a café.

Money-Saving

Remote working saves money on both sides. Employees don’t have to worry about traveling costs, especially those living away from the city center, or lunch and coffee expenses, and those can add up unseen. Companies save even more, especially on office space expenses. Remember, they don’t just include space renting price. More employees mean more furniture and technology, more lightning and water bills. Then there are office supplies, and it doesn’t hurt that this way you’re saving a few trees too.

Better Recruitment

Not being geographically limited opens the door for a bigger talent pool. This way a company isn’t limited to potential workers in its area, but can choose the best-suited candidate from the other side of the globe. It goes the same way for workers. A person living in a third-world country isn’t restricted to that country’s salary standard, when their only limit to getting a job of their dreams is their skill competence.

Remote recruiting, in a way, is an engagement booster. Employees appreciate employers who don’t require them to sacrifice a piece of the way they live in order to move closer to the job, for example.

Global recruitment also results in diversity, and that brings increased originality and creativity. This can prove very useful in client-based business. If you have, let’s say, a lot of clients from China, a remote worker from China can help achieve better communication with those clients.

Better Work-Life Balance

Companies who allow remote working understand workers have other things going on in their lives besides work. Obviously, it doesn’t mean work comes last, just that they have that flexibility to fit both work and private matters in their daily schedule. For a person whose kid goes to kindergarten, it means a great deal being able to stop mid-work to pick the child up, and then get back to where they left off. It certainly doesn’t affect the quality of work, and it gives them one less thing to worry about and they can fully focus on the work.

Final Thoughts

A remote team can function just as well as in-office team, or even better, as long as you’re aware of certain challenges it poses and address them from the start.