Most executives are keenly aware that trust in their brand and their leadership is tightly interwoven with the business’ profit potential.
Earier this week, Bill Catlette of the Contented Cow blogged about “A Crisis of Trust” facing American companies as we begin to look beyond the recession to recovery. He’s dead-on about upcoming issues that are going to affect businesses – especially healthcare and the economic recovery itself. He makes a powerful argument for the need of employers to step up and start building confidence in their leadership now so that their brands emerge with a strong internal and external following.
It’s a timely argument and one that every business leader should be thinking about. As we all know, trust is something earned. You can’t buy it, you can’t fake it and it’s critical to the success and productivity of your business.
Susan M. Heathfield may have best defined the importance of trust in business in her About.com article “Trust Rules: The Most Important Secret About Trust”:
Trust forms the foundation for effective communication, employee retention, and employee motivation and contribution of discretionary energy, the extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work.
How you treat your employees during dire times is a major contributing factor in trust building within and related to your organization. Even the most unpleasant business decisions, like layoffs, can be handled with clear communication, dignity and respect for those you must let go.
HR executives are experts in handling these matters and working with the C-suite to make sure that difficult news is delivered in a professional, respectable way. And, they can extend affordable benefits like employee assistance programs (EAPs) to ease those transitions.
But a new challenge is on the horizon: continuing to build trust and demonstrate leadership in your organization as the economy turns around and your biggest asset – your employees – begin to have more job opportunities.
If you wait until the tide turns, it will be too late. If you want to keep your best talent, you need to be ahead of the curve in offering industry-leading employee incentives – and that doesn’t necessarily mean a bigger paycheck and a company car.
In terms of benefits, it can mean offering a work/life balance that gets the most out of your staff while allowing them to get the most out of life. It can mean affordable wellness programs that keep people fit and healthy. It can even mean a little more of what you’re already proving in terms of workplace resources.
These types of benefits cost pennies on the dollar compared to other incentives. They are small, affordable steps you can start to take now to show appreciation for your employees and everything they do for you.
A lot more goes into leadership than offering benefits, but they are business choices that contribute to perceptions of leadership. They are the types of decisions made internally that build trust with one of your most important audiences – your “internal investors.”
Tags: affordable, C-suite, EAP, employee assistance, employees, healthcare, HR executives, Leadership, profit potential, trust, Wellness, work/life balance
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