Rampant Lack of Trust Drives Employee Defections BY Kate Sweetman

The job of a leader is to create other leaders! Read this post and my comments on it if you're struggling with employee engagement in your company!
This article is written by an expert blogging community member and expresses her views alone.

Recession has little to do with employee dissatisfaction, says Nick Holley, who was voted the 12th most influential thinker in HR by Human Resources Magazine. He places current concerns about a presumed broad scale employee turnover in a recovery in a larger historical context – and asserts that the problem runs deeper than many realize.

I was lucky to catch Nick Holley between engagements in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. The Gulf States and the Kingdom are hot to develop greater professionalism in their nationals, and experts like Nick are in high demand. In surveying him for my current blog series on “The Recovering Leader” (exploring how corporate leaders might retain their valuable workers when economic recovery creates greater free agency), I suggested that he talk about his experiences in that region.

Instead, he preferred to discuss something else: the larger picture around how trust has eroded in the workplace and the world, a profound decline which he believes is the crux of the matter. If the issue of trust is addressed naively, leaders might launch the very defections that they fear most.

Nick made three crisp points: 1) the recession is not the same for everyone; 2) the recession is the tip of the trust iceberg; and 3) regaining trust can only take place in one-on-one relationship, not in programmatic efforts.

Point 1: The recession is not a monolith. “This recession is not the same experience for everybody,” says Nick.”In some organizations, one division suffers and another expands. Impacts vary across geographies. Saudi Arabia has no recession; Qatar has no recession. Dubai has a recession of a sort but the people feeling it the most are the overseas investors because it hit property the hardest. It is dangerous to talk about ‘the recession’ as one thing because it clouds the issue.” In other words, trust suffers today in even places that are economically fine.

Point 2: This recession is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. “Loss of trust has been underway for 20 years,” Nick stresses. “Not just in business, but in many parts of society. Divorce rates are very high, at least in the UK and US. Consumers kick the tires of whatever they buy – why believe the advertising claims? In the UK, fewer and fewer voters trust that their opinion matters, so more and more have stopped voting. They don’t trust the political system – nor, of course, the politicians who are the visible face of the system. Few sensible people trust the media anymore. And rank and file employees don’t trust the employers who subjected them to downsizing and cutbacks while the gap between executive pay and their own has widened so dramatically. The recession has driven the tip of the iceberg further above the surface, but the larger body of the iceberg has been there and growing for years.”

How does this play out in terms of what employees will choose to do? His research reveals two distinct groups representing two fundamental reactions. “The first group consists of people who believe large organizations to be fundamentally dysfunctional and who have opted out – nothing to do with the recession. These are the people off starting their own businesses – or off simply having a better time than you or me. The second group is composed of those who are still trying to make organizations work. They are the ones doing all the slashing. Many of them are effectively as trapped in those organizations as anyone else, and may well be looking for a way out.”

Point 3: Organizations don’t build trust, individuals do. “You can’t hide behind an employee opinion survey if you are going to solve this problem,” Nick said strongly. “Typically, the wrong questions are being asked, and the categories are too broad and impersonal. Each line manager has to understand the individuals that he or she is dealing with, and build trust one person, one conversation, at a time. There is no other way.”

Where are the bright spots? What organizations have managed to garner the trust and commitment that so eludes the rest? Nick was unhesitating in his response: “NGOs and the charity sector.” Because they are better run? Not necessarily, maybe not even likely. The reason: “People in those organizations experience a much stronger sense of purpose and belonging. The key for them is the mission.”

Mission. Purpose. Trust. Fairness. Belonging. True voice. Personal relationship. Hard to argue these.

Please leave comments below -- we are eager to have a conversation on this important topic.
Thank you
Rony Delgarde

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDun

I recently read "Half the Sky"This book describes the grim reality of life for women and girls in much of the developing world and is must reading for everyone who cares about education and empowerment for women and girls worldwide.

The title of this book comes from an old Chinese proverb: women hold up half the sky. The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors lead us into the world of women in developing countries: breaking the silence about vaginal fistulas that ostracize thousands and thousands of girls; trafficking of girls and women; discussing the reality of wife-beatings as prevalent; and other contemporary issues facing women in a variety of cultures around the world. But they don't stop there, they then share the wonderful stories of hope and empowerment: through self-help projects; access to education; and micro-credit loans. One telling statement with its source in the US military, to paraphrase: where girls and women are educated, terrorism is not prevalent.

Find a copy and read it!!
Rony Delgarde