Six Ways HR Can Build Workplace Trust

Why it’s important

Trust is foundational to every successful relationship. Workplace relationships are no exception, whether between employees, employees and their managers, or employees and leadership.

HR can lead the effort to cultivate a high-trust work environment that benefits everyone's growth and success by identifying opportunities for relationship-building and leveraging measurement and methodology.

Building trust with your employees benefits your organization's short- and long-term health, funneling a cascading positive effect to multiple areas in the workplace — increasing employee engagement and psychological safety; decreasing stress; and improving individual performance, organizational alignment, collaboration, and retention. The result is a more positive workplace culture — much needed in the hybrid and remote work era.

According to the Harvard Business Review, employees at high-trust companies report 106% more energy at work, 76% more engagement, 74% less stress, 50% higher productivity, 40% less burnout, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, and 13% fewer sick days.

When trust is cultivated and sustained, it can strengthen manager-employee relationships, which in turn supports strategic HR outcomes like improved employee engagement and performance. On the flip side, in the absence of trust, manager-employee relations often suffer, negatively impacting goals like lowering regrettable turnover. 
                                                            
Here are six ways that HR leaders can foster a high-trust work environment.

A great place to start is to lean into existing methods for gathering employee feedback and measuring employee engagement. An easy get is to include trust-related questions in weekly check-ins or employee engagement surveys. This can be as simple as using a rating scale to assess how employees agree or disagree with statements like, “I trust the other people on my team” or “I trust my manager.”
 
The answers can provide valuable insight into your organization's trust levels and enable HR to leverage the responses to make improvements and track changes over time. Plus, survey results from teams and managers can help pinpoint which need additional guidance or support. 

Advocate for Goal Transparency

Prioritizing goal alignment and transparency can play a significant role in improving trust in the workplace. In his research on team conflict at General Electric, Noel Tichy found that unclear or misaligned goals caused over 90% of team conflicts. 

Additional research from MIT Sloan acknowledges that only 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could list three company strategic priorities.
 
Implement a universal goal-setting methodology such as OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) that gives every manager and individual contributor a view of objectives at all levels of the organization and how they are connected. The transparency achieved eliminates ambiguity and confusion and ensures everyone understands what they are working toward. This knowledge is empowering, increasing trust and motivation among your employees to follow through on those objectives.

Build Feedback Loops

Establish consistent feedback processes that provide opportunities for constructive feedback and growth. An annual performance review is inadequate for improving performance or trust — there needs to be consistent, operationalized touchpoints to exchange feedback throughout the year.
 
Encourage regular touchpoints between managers and employees, that are supported by software tools like weekly check-ins and one-on-one meeting agendas. These check-ins can include questions about the employee's progress on their priorities and more personal/wellness-focused questions, such as, "Is there anything you are worried about or anything I can help you with?"
 
Then go one step better. Ensure that managers are having regular “face-to-face” conversations with their direct reports, either in-person or virtually. These touchpoints facilitate real-time conversations, where employees and managers have unedited dialogue that is authentic and sometimes vulnerable. A feedback conversation to move progress forward then has the added benefit of strengthening the manager-employee relationship.  

Create Space for Recognition and Gratitude

As an HR leader, you are essential in cultivating a culture of gratitude in your organization and creating a workplace where all employees feel valued, respected, and appreciated. 

Research shows that a bit of appreciation can go a long way in the workplace — 81% of employees report that they are more motivated to work hard when their boss shows appreciation for them, and 53% of employees said that receiving more appreciation from their manager would make them want to stay longer at the company.
  
Historically, HR leaders have relied on the hope that their managers are vocally recognizing their employees' accomplishments or writing them thank-you notes — methods that are hard to track.
 
But technology can now give HR visibility when an employee is recognized for a job well done. Employee recognition software — especially one that enables employees to give each other public "shoutouts" — can promote employee appreciation and gratitude as a core part of the company culture in an operationalized, trackable, and scalable way. It also helps to hold managers accountable for building an authentic culture of recognition gratitude, and increased trust.

Foster Diversity, Inclusion, Equality, and Belonging

Promoting DEIB goes together with maximizing trust in the workplace, as it helps to create an environment where all employees feel safe, supported, valued, and respected.
 
HR must pave the way by implementing policies and processes demonstrating that the company values and welcomes diversity, like ensuring that recruitment and hiring are focused on diverse candidates, people are paid fairly, promoted equitably, and given equitable opportunities to succeed. 

This will establish a baseline level of trust that the workplace is a safe, welcoming environment for all employees and that all employees are valued and treated with respect, regardless of their background, age, identity, or ability. Leaders must also address challenges of existing exclusion, inequity, and discrimination within the organization.
 
HR must do more than set the tone. Managers are crucial in creating and leading inclusive teams where psychological safety is high, collaboration is the norm, and innovation can thrive. So much of HR's ability to move the needle on trust in the workplace relies on the day-to-day interactions that managers have with their teams and the level of priority that managers put on creating trust and safety for their teams. 

Train Managers/Leaders to Build Trust

HR leaders should invest in leadership training and development programs to equip managers with the skills and coaching necessary to foster trust. Training programs can cover topics like building strong relationships and implementing trust-building strategies. This investment can lead to employees and managers establishing new and more dynamic communication cadences, boosting trust between managers and employees, and helping teams stay focused, motivated, and more aligned with company goals.
 
Building trust can feel like an abstract concept, but HR leaders can significantly boost its practice in the workplace. By implementing proven processes and structures to foster trust, HR can improve employee engagement, performance, retention, and manager effectiveness and help create a more successful workplace for everyone. 

Jennie Yang believes that when leaders create the conditions for inclusive and psychologically safe work environments, team members feel seen, heard, and valued and perform the best work of their lives. As VP of People & Culture at 15Five, she provides strategic counsel on organizational effectiveness, talent strategy and development, and change management. Jennie is a strategic and operational consulting leader with over 12 years of experience designing business strategies and driving organizational transformations for Fortune 500 companies. Jennie is a certified Master Practitioner in Transformational Neuro-Linguistic Programming (tNLP), and a leadership coach and facilitator who helps unlock the potential of individuals, teams, and organizations.