Busting through the management bottleneck

Hana Dickinson

With businesses on the cusp of returning to the workplace, now is the perfect time to review your company's culture and behaviours to ensure you're best placed for business success.

Here are some of the ways in which you can help to remove potential setbacks and obstacles and encourage your staff to reach their potential at work.

Show that you trust them

Showing that you trust your employees can result in several benefits. Firstly, it makes them feel more valued which leads to better engagement in their work. One study found that workers in a trusting environment were 76% more engaged than those in a low-trust workplace. (1)

Trust also leads to empowerment. It gives employees the freedom to go about their duties without feeling they must get permission or reassurance from management first. This can lead to increased productivity in the workplace. (2)

Staff who feel trusted often display better camaraderie. Those who feel they're able to work independently often forge a team spirit and sense of community. According to research, this is because employees in high-trust environments have more confidence in themselves and their colleagues and are more open to working together. (3)

How to show staff that you trust them

Developing a culture of trust within your company from the top down will inspire employees to model the behaviour they see from management. So, take every opportunity to show you're a high-trust environment by:

Listening: Let everyone be heard so they feel their opinion counts. Whether it's asking questions or raising issues, actively listening to your staff will help them feel they're working in a trusted culture
Communicating: Employees want to feel supported and understood. Being honest with your employees and sensitive to their feelings will help to build trust

Give clear direction on values and behaviours

With so much going on in a business it's not always obvious - or easy - for employees to follow the best path to getting ahead. A clear mission statement will give some clarity on this by expressing the values your company adheres to, to achieve its vision.

In other words, expressing your brand's unique qualities (such as inclusivity or fairness) helps to promote the types of behaviours your company expects from your employees. From a career progression point of view, this gives your staff a strategic roadmap of outcomes to work towards.

Offer judgement and decision-making training

If employees are required to get sign-off on every business decision, the message an employer is sending to them is that they do not trust their judgement. It also creates a bottleneck for management who are having to juggle multiple sign-offs from multiple team members.

By training employees in the skills of decision-making - e.g. how to consider the risks, stakeholder considerations, company priorities, etc. - you are empowering your staff to get on with their jobs. By acknowledging that mistakes may happen and that's ok, you're trusting them to learn from their experiences.

Track performance on outputs

With more people working from home than ever before, the traditional nine-to-five working day is becoming something of a thing of the past. Therefore, rather than judging employees by their clocking in and clocking out times, review their performance on their output.

Doing so helps to create an atmosphere of trust and helps promote open communication as staff are free to focus on what matters most: the end result.

For more advice on how to empower your organisation to perform better, become more effective, and harness your employee’s full potential, get in touch. You can also take a look at our full range of programmes here.

References

(1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2017/01/10/further-evidence-that-trust-is-the-no-1-ingredient-for-a-strong-company-culture/?sh=28ba5df716f2

(2) https://www.ciphr.com/features/six-reasons-trust-employees/

(3) https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/why-trust-is-critical-team-success-research-report.pdf

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