30 Nov Why Trust Among Hires and Companies is Critical in Global Mobility World
What do global talents rely on most before accepting a job offer, especially if the hiring manager of a global mobility company is thousands of miles away? In most cases, the potential assignee needs to be assured before it can extend its trust–in most cases, to the hiring company. It is now up to the global mobility manager to establish trust with the company then.
Globalization links many people more than ever but to establish trust without the benefit of seeing each other has to indicate one thing: The global mobility company is run almost to perfection. Where a locally based company may skip a day or two to return emails, a global company may need to react faster than local companies. Distance affects trust.
Many jobs involve a heavy flow of information that can be hard to monitor and coordinate; something could get lost in translation. The importance of trust to hiring activity is critical to businesses.
The cost of not having trust in businesses and the workplace is also greater than you may be aware of. Mistrust trickles down to the work environment; people can become unreliable, inadequate, disloyal, uncommunicative and inconsistent in their work and moods.
According to the new Edelman “Trust Barometer” (a survey of 33,000 people in 28 countries), one in three people don’t trust their employer.
When trust is present, though, people start to take ownership of their responsibilities, help one another out, speak highly of one another, communicate more often, and tend to be more productive.
Trust provides a safe place for people to share their struggles and dreams and reach their potential individually and as a team. Fast Company shares five elements of trust to help you raise the morale of your team.
In the survey, it also discovered that trust decreases from top positions to the lowest. For instance, 64 percent of executives trust their organizations, while only 51 percent of managers and 48 percent of other staff stated they trust their organizations. Trust goes down with peers working for the higher up executives.
This is an important insight to know because you will eventually to lead an organization. So to prepare you for that, here are fix questions that determine if you’re a trustworthy leader, according to Fast Company.
- Do people constantly question your expectations of them?
- Would most people describe you as someone who is reliable?
- Is there a high amount of gossip and disrespect among your team?
- Do the majority of team members underperform at the tasks you ask them to do?
- Do you trust people to take on new responsibilities?
If the answer questions one, three, and four are yes, and two and five are no, there is work to be done.
Start improving by learning these five elements of trust by Betsy Allen Manning of ATD.
Be transparent
How do you establish trust? Be transparent with your team.”Transparency is showing accountability through communication,” according to the mag.
And what is transparency if not being honest, being vulnerable, giving feedback, and stating expectations?! As a leader, you can also be transparent by admitting mistakes and being vulnerable with others. While this indicates that you’re not perfect either, it tells people that they can trust you.
Show respect
Respect employee’s time and ideas. Showing respect doesn’t mean you have to agree with everyone, but when you honor their feelings, it builds trust, and they feel safe to open up more often. Respect is simply the Golden Rule in action: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Unite your team
What kills team morale, if not gossip? Avoid it. Do make them work toward one vision. Give them a group project they have to complete by working together. If they fail, they all reap the consequences, and if they succeed, they all receive the reward. The team that struggles together and succeeds together is a team that unites.
Show them you care.
As leadership expert John C. Maxwell said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Trust is built when someone sees that you truly value them as a person and not just as an employee.
Trust-building activities build morale
Employees are happier if they like the people they work with. Use the “Index Card Game,” in which everyone has to write down something positive they think that their fellow employees brought to the team.
Every problem companies experience with their employees springs from the same root cause: there is too little trust in the environment. There is too much fear.
Now if team building does not work, why? There’s the learning gap, the embarrassment factor, the risk of patronizing employees, and the confusion between socializing and team-building. To read in more detail, read the Forbes piece.
And answer this question, Do you want to build a team of professionals, or a team of friends? Friends can be un-assertive with fear of losing the friendship, professionals can give and receive feedback in a professional manner.
For global mobility managers, trusting their potential hires requires the product, vision, and management of the organization.