Trust is and can be a province of an effective HR if the administrative team is not cultured on partiality and favouritism. The goal includes ensuring employee happiness, and this means building an HR team that can champion diversity and that employees can recognise.
How then do you know and get employee trust for HR higher? Of course, you gauge and ensure enhancement with HR software, making sure employees can recognise, and perceive the HR admin as a problem solver. You also should be interested in satisfying the various employee touchpoints by making it a priority to build relationships and communicate with your employees.
Considering the hasty rate of work change, and dynamic nature of employee expectations, a recent 1,000-employee survey of the UK organisations of 250+ employees discloses what the present state of trust could be in your organisation and why you must build HR trust.
Why Trust is Essential and What Your Current HR Trust Levels May Look Like
Trust can be key in various ways, and high-trust businesses benefit from the trust in the following ways:
- Fewer sick days. An employee can decide to fake it to get out of work, typically because of low trust. Perhaps, they have a problem, but the channels of communication to HR is not there, or they do not trust HR enough to share their problem. In this case, the employee is tempted to fake a sick day off or under stress.
A study shows 1 in 6 Brits fake sick leaves to get out of work for a day. This figure can cost your daily business, and you want to eliminate it. Fortunately, Cezanne HR’s study estimates a high trust in HR teams can reduce sick days by 29%.
- Productivity. The HR admin will agree that ensuring a good relationship can bolster productivity. Suppose your employee does not trust your HR to manage internal conflict, this would mean hindered productivity as long as the conflict remains unresolved because you are unaware of it.
It continues to dig deeper like a worm, especially with the survey showing 47% would not trust HR to help them in managing conflict with another member of staff. This survey also backs it that an organisation with high trust will experience 50% higher productivity.
- Less stress and burnout. You can reduce stress and burnouts by 74% and 40% respectively. Employee stress can result from the loss of opportunities. For instance, your employee expecting a promotion, but does not trust the HR to make them aware of internal promotion opportunities, can feel stressed.
- It can also occur from conflict with another member of staff, job insecurity, etc. On the other hand, employee burnout can develop from prolonged work hours, typically from physical or emotional exhaustion.
- The energy at work. Higher trust can encourage employees to put in more energy at work and the survey shows trust attracts a 106% energy boost at the workplace.
In an instance where the employee does not sense HR favouritism, partiality, etc., trust sets in or improves, and the employee puts up relentless effort to work, knowing they would be treated fairly.
According to Survey: What Employee Expects You to Do to Improve HR Trust
Get Employees to Recognise HR Team Members
You could be running a business where your employees cannot recognise your HR, which becomes a bit of a problem in how employees will interact with HR. The survey shows only 55.4% of your employees can readily recognise an HR team member.
You need to work to improve this figure because over 20% could have issues knowing the HR team member at all. When employees do not recognise HR, they cannot completely trust them notify them about internal opportunities, remain impartial, etc.
Thus, ensuring that interactiveness between HR and staff members can establish higher trust and set both parties on course towards success.
Leave No Room for Favouritism
Favouritism can hinder good relationships at the workplace. To avoid it, ensure to treat your employees fairly instead of prioritising one over the other due to class or personal relationships. Besides, under 50% of your employees could be trusting HR to act impartially. Very few of your junior staff (12%) think you function impartially and this must not be.
Become a Diversity Champion
You can improve employee trust by talking openly and creating awareness about diversity and inclusion goals. First, rethink how you define diversity, educate members of staff and employ the lens of inclusion.
Ensure that Employees Keep Tabs with HR
Do not frustrate the employee. With effective communication channels, you can ensure and monitor employee engagement. This takes place by opening avenues for employees to share their feelings, ideas and relevant information with the management. The channels of communication can be through mobile apps, email, or collaboration tools.
Bring in HR Software to Look After the People Correctly
Let HR do the job of looking after the HR managing people processes. When HR automates and streamlines people process management, HR can focus on HR basics, including performance management, HR and data analytics, compensation and benefits, etc., to build relationships.
With HR tools assisting the admin, HR can ensure and improve people processes, including recruitment, selection, hiring, training, induction, evaluation, etc.
Human resource management software can ensure effective communication which bolsters good relationships at the workplace. With an efficient HR tool, the collaborative standards of your company changes as HRIS let employees reach HR easily. This also ensures high flexibility in communication, thereby keeping employees and HR departments in touch.