Hiring a new employee can be exhausting, with paperwork, training and onboarding responsibilities many employers can become overwhelmed. Trust plays a major hand in the beginning stages of an employee/employer relationship. Don’t miss out on the crucial positive outcomes of truly trusting your new employees! Check out these 5 reasons you should trust your new hire/talent/hopeful jack of all trades.
1. Instilling trust in your employees can encourage them to become brand advocates
When an employee truly enjoys their job and looks forward to the workplace, they are more likely to express their happiness to their friends and family. Advocating solely for your brand, your new employee will talk fondly of your company encouraging a positive image of the corporation as a whole.
“Word of mouth marketing and referrals from employees are two very important benefits that your business can capitalise on if you simply trust your people and encourage them to engage with the brand. Advocates are far less likely to look for employment elsewhere, reducing turnover and its associated costs and building experience and expertise among your workforce.” – Barry, Writer, CIPHR.
The Trust Takeaway: Create brand ambassadors of your employees by strengthening their onboarding process. The Society of Human Resources found that new employees who participated in a structured orientation program were 69% more likely to remain at a company up to three years. Additionally, onboarding programs have been shown to increase retention by 25% and improve employee performance by up to 11%.
2. The mighty confidence factor
“When building a person’s confidence, listening to their story is crucial. Allow them to communicate openly and honestly about their strengths, weakness, fears, accomplishments, and career goals. Listening validates what they are feeling and lets them know that they have someone in their corner who will listen and listen more.” – Greg Martin, Writer, Aboutleaders.com
When you allow your employees certain rights, and privileges creatively via trust and cooperative understanding, you leave room for employee confidence. When you leave room for employee confidence, you leave room for cutting edge innovation, new ideas, truly letting talent read through the lines of quality leadership (from you, you trusting employer you!)
The Trust Takeaway: Tell your employees early on what the parameters of their job and your culture and workplace are during the onboarding process. Don’t make them guess what is appropriate. Spell it out. The Aberdeen Group reported that 66% of companies with onboarding programs claimed a higher rate of successful assimilation of new hires into company culture.
3. Be Transparent
This isn’t exactly a new idea, but allowing yourself to be transparent can open the door for your employees to be transparent with you, allowing you to evaluate an employee’s honesty and trustworthiness.
“The idea that a company’s employees are its most influential ambassadors has been amplified in the connected world. Addressing transparency internally and committing to it will help employees feel as though they are a trusted and integral part of the organization’s success, with a clear vision of how they play into the future direction.” – Marc Sowik, Contributor, Authenticity Rules.
The Trust Takeaway: 96% of job seekers say that it’s crucial to work for a company that welcomes transparency.
4. Delegation is key
When you trust your employees to do certain projects on their own, you allow time for other work (that had maybe fallen by the wayside before) to move up in the ranks. This not only allows you to be more productive, but your employees as well (with less micromanaging interruptions.)
“Sometimes, efficiency isn’t about shifting priorities or working on things in a different order. Sometimes, your workload is simply too much for one sane person to bear, and you need a little help to get everything done on time. Some professionals wear a heavy workload as a kind of badge of honor, considering it a point of pride or evidence of job security, but that isn’t a valuable long-term strategy to deal with the increased load.” – Jayson Demers, Contributor, Inc.
The Trust Takeaway: 4 easy steps to mastering delegation:
- Detail the task at hand, give a brief and detailed explanation of the work you wish to get accomplished.
- Reveal the importance of the task at hand, providing the company’s goals in terms of the project’s overall presence.
- Provide the resources necessary to complete the task (detail any underlying borders to which the project cannot exceed etc…)
- Tell them what you expect to see once the project is done. List defining features and aspects in which the project requires.
5. Trust breeds confidence
“If a company trusts their employees and shows it by staying out of their way, they’ll do a better job of retaining that talent, the people they have will be more productive and they’ll attract more great people with their great employer brand. If they don’t trust their employees, the exact opposite will happen.”- Paul Petrone, Writer, LinkedIn Talent blog.
Trust breeds honesty, and with an honest management team and loyal workforce, your company can spar with any competition.
The Trust Takeaway: While 64% of employed adults feel their organization treats them fairly, 1 in 3 reported that their employer is not always honest and truthful with them.
“This lack of trust should serve as a wake-up call for employers,” said David W. Ballard, head of APA’s Center for Organizational Excellence in a 2014 press release. “Trust plays an important role in the workplace and affects employees’ well-being and job performance.”
Now that you’ve got some insight as to why trusting your new employees is crucial, put yourself to the test. Delegate some work, be a little more transparent with your goals, open up. Your employees will appreciate the change of pace and work up to par with their new found freedom in accomplishing work. And start building trust on their first day.
