You want to be sure that you work with the right type of people, therefore business leaders and owners must build trust with employees. You want to have employees that you can trust and who trust you. It’s imperative to build a team that will help you through your initial launch, and that will be loyal to your business for the long term. It may not always be an easy road, but these are the people that will help you to be successful. Great people can contribute to a strong business, and they need to know that they can be trusted from the start.
So how can you be sure to build trust with employees? How can you be sure to build a team of great people who you know are committed to the best for your business? It’s all about taking care of your people and making them be a part of things; be a part of the success. It’s also about thinking of how you would want to be treated, and then capitalizing on that. The more that you put into your team, the more they will be committed to you and the success of your business overall. Here’s how to build that trust and ignite great people to contribute to your business’ success.
6 Ways A Business Owner Can Build Trust with Employees
- Involve them in some of the decision making: Even if it’s smaller decisions, let them be a part of this process early on. Once they have shown that they are trustworthy then let them play a part in the overall operations. Give them less critical decisions at first and once they prove that they can make good decisions and be trusted, continue to involve them in making decisions that will help the business overall. They will love to be a part of things, and this goes a long way to build trust.
- Let them help to determine and define their role: You hire them based on past experience, an interview and references, but you will soon get a real sense of their true strengths and talents. Allow them to help to define what their actual role is going forward. See what they are interested in or how they can help you naturally. The more that you allow this latitude the more that it benefits your business and shows that you trust them, and that they can in turn trust you.
- Build a strong, open lines of communication: Be sure that they feel that they can talk to you about anything. Be forthcoming about business issues and the way you are running your business. Talk to them and let them talk to you and offer ideas or insight in areas where you might need them. You may be surprised that they offer appropriate solutions to business challenges. Above all, know that communication is the key to a good relationship on any level, and that it definitely applies here.
- Share the vision and passion to get them excited too: Let them know what you see as the future for your business and share your vision with them. Let them see your excitement and ensure that they understand and share in your passion. Talk to them often about new opportunities or things that excite you, and it will go a long way in letting them see all the sides of you. This all contributes to how you build trust with employees and foster a positive long term working relationship as well.
- Allow them to share ideas to help the business grow: Certainly you want to keep a handle on this so that it doesn’t become bigger than what you have in mind. If you can manage it and ensure that they can be involved in helping the business to grow, it shows that you trust them and that they can trust you. It also helps them to invest their energy into the business with their presence and their strengths. You might uncover some amazing ideas and then ensure that you have an employee that will be with you for the long term too. Just let them share their ideas, listen to them and see how the trust grows.
- Share in your profits once your business is up and running: This doesn’t come until once the business is established but it can be part of the hiring and negotiating process. Be cautious that it does not dip into your profits too much, but do allow them the opportunity to share the wealth so to speak when appropriate. Talk about what you can do to make their work worthwhile and how they can share in the profit in some manner once the business is up and running. This opportunity to make more money through profit sharing will contribute to your employees being more accountable, having a vested interest in seeing the business do well and having improved employee engagement. Each of these will definitely help with building trust in your employee team and to improve the overall performance of your business.
You want to hire employees that are going to be loyal, and work with you for the long term. You want to build trust, accountability and strong teamwork amongst your team so that there will be strong, open communication. The more that you talk to your team and involve them in the business, the greater the trust and business performance will be.
