'Trust enters on foot, but leaves on horseback'

This phrase comes from a report on repairing organisational trust, by Rosalind Searle, Veronica Hope-Hailey and Graham Dietz, OP Matters, No 15 May 2012, The British Psychological Society.   We've talked elsewhere about the importance of trust (See our Hints and Tips handout on 'Giving Bad News' in the Executive Lounge area of our website for a brief introduction).  This current paper is of interest because it is focused towards repairing trust, a situation that many organisations may find themselves in, given the current tough times, when circumstances mean that previous promises may not have been met.  The authors highlight four dimensions of trust (Ability, Benevolence, Integrity and Predictability) and they also highlight that an employee may confound trust in the organisation with how much they trust their leader (individual trust).  They also found that trust is not a one-way process; an employee is much more likely to give trust if they, themselves, feel trusted by their manager.

The authors identified 5 types of approaches to trust in organisations:  Trust in each other, trust in leaders, trust in the organisation, trust in external relations and trust in the direct line manager.  The results of their research showed that those organisations which exhibited high levels of trust in each other were not only able to repair damage to trust but had built up a reservoir of trust prior to negative events.  These inter-relationships between interested parties meant that  the organisation could draw on an existing support network of goodwill.  Organisations which relied more heavily on trust in their leaders were more vulnerable to loss of trust, particularly if the individuals concerned were lacking in any of the four personal dimensions of trust (Ability, Benevolence, Integrity and Predictability).  

Other factors that helped organisations repair trust in hard times were those that kept their staff informed, despite the news being bad (Treat your people as adults).  Also, organisations where leaders stayed available and demonstrated a high level of presence with their employees fared better, as did those where there was a 'line of trust' which flowed through all levels of management.  '...the greater the firm relied on the direct interaction between customers and low level employees, then the more crucial it was that the link of trust between senior managers, line managers and employees was not broken'.

Perhaps most interestingly, the re-negotiation of formal contractual relationships with employees also had an effect.  Having the courage to develop more realistic relationships based on current circumstances may be hard to do, but the dividends may be greater in the long run.

You can read a full report in the March 2012 publication of the CIPD journal 'People Management'.