Do you trust your employees? Really trust them? If not, you might have a serious problem. Trust is extremely important in the workplace for several reasons. It improves productivity, makes workers feel more valued, and can even help improve customer service and brand reputation.
Members of your team should be able to make decisions on their own and feel confident in proposing new ideas or trying something new for the company. They should also feel like they can tell you “no” when “no” is the right answer.
You should be a strong leader, but you shouldn’t be micromanaging every aspect of what your employees do on a day-to-day basis. If you are, learning to trust them more could help you take your business to the next level.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the many reasons why it pays to trust employees.
Trusted Employees Are More Productive
When you trust your employees, it makes them feel like you see them as a valuable part of your organization. Lack of trust, on the other hand, instills the opposite feeling. By trusting and making your employees feel important, you make them feel good about the work they are doing. They know that you trust them to get their work done on time and do a good job, and this encourages them to work harder.
Building a culture of appreciation and trust makes workers feel more loyal to their organizations, which can also help reduce turnover. This, of course, increases productivity by eliminating the need to frequently hire and train new people.
When you trust your employees, you are also enabling them to get more done in the first place. They are more likely to complete tasks in a timely manner if they don’t have to be worried about being in trouble for something trivial like using too much printer ink.
Trust Improves Customer Service and Brand Reputation
According to one study, as many as 65% of customers have stopped doing business with a brand following a single bad customer service experience. There is no denying that customer service is extremely important, but, as the owner of a company, you may never actually deal with your customers firsthand. Your employees are the face of your brand. When you trust them, they are able to provide better customer service.
When you trust your employees to run your business, they are able to offer answers and solutions without forcing dissatisfied customers to work their way up a chain of command. Because they will feel more appreciated and positive about their jobs, they will communicate with customers with more enthusiasm. Because they are dealing directly with customers, they have a better understanding of the customer’s needs than you do anyway. This enables them to provide much better customer service than you or even a manager in another department could.
When employees are able to deliver exceptional customer service, it helps create and reinforce your brand’s reputation. This improves customer retention and, ultimately, makes you more money.
Placing Trust in Your Employees Frees Up Your Time
Do you ever feel like you spend so much time worrying about what your employees are doing that you can’t get anything else done? If so, you might be doing too much micromanaging. By letting go of the reins a bit and placing a bit more trust in your employees, you will quickly discover how much more free time you have when you don’t waste hours micromanaging things like restocking the supply closet with ink cartridges.
You hired employees because you needed help accomplishing everything that needs to be done in your business on a daily basis. If you don’t trust them to make their own decisions and complete their tasks successfully, though, you are not allowing them to do you much good. Stop wasting your time supervising and micromanaging, and you will find that you have a lot more time for getting your own tasks done.
How to Start Trusting Your Employees
As a business owner, it isn’t always easy to trust your employees. Giving up control and putting your business in someone else’s hands can be frightening, but it is necessary if you want to truly succeed. Unfortunately, starting to trust your employees isn’t as easy as going to work tomorrow and deciding to let go. It is more of a process than an overnight solution.
Start by making sure the people who work for your company are right for the job. They should be qualified for the position and be capable of working well with your desired company culture. They also need to understand and share your values.
Provide training for new employees and additional training for existing ones. Make sure everyone understands your company’s goals and values and how to implement them. Also, ensure that they are aware of your expectations and the consequences should they fail to meet them.
Offer guidelines to help employees understand how to handle different situations. These don’t need to be steadfast rules, but they should be clear enough to help your team feel confident being the face of the brand.
Conclusion
If you feel like your workers are not as productive as they should be, consider how you could be causing the problem. Employees who are not trusted do not feel appreciated, and they do not have the freedom to handle situations on their own. By learning to trust your team more, though, you can boost productivity, improve customer service, build a stronger reputation for your brand, and free up more of your time for working on your own tasks and other projects.
Letting go of some control and putting your faith in your employees is not always easy, but doing so will result in a more productive and profitable business.
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