Guest Blog: Workplace trust

The Small Business Blog recently posted an article which discussed the best practices for conducting employee surveys. In it, we learned some valuable lessons about how to get the most out of a survey – the main purpose of which is to gauge employee engagement levels.

But what if the results aren’t all that you had hoped for? Employee engagement is crucial to business performance. At the end of the day, it is the workforce that provides the backbone of any company and if you find the workers aren’t motivated, then effectiveness and productivity will suffer.

Of course this is easier said and done. Exactly what is the best way to motivate a workforce? There are so many techniques out there it can get quite overwhelming to define an approach, especially for new or smaller businesses. Instead of concentrating on one key area, be it training or improving benefits, would it not be more effective to link all these initiatives into one all-encompassing theme.

Indeed, this is the view of employee engagement expert, Susanne Jacobs, who managed to define one common denominator: trust. As a result, the income protection team at Unum have come up with the following infographic to display her findings.

The main aim of this graphic is to show that all key motivators have a basis in trust. From trusting employees to take organisation-defining decisions, to equipping them with the tools to do so, trust is such a simple entity that can easily be absorbed into the wireframe of any business.

Adopting a trusting mantra will not only lead to increased employee engagement but, crucially, increased productivity and effectiveness.