Author: Dr John Blakey

Trust at all levels is vital for any workplace or organisation to function as well as it possibly can. However, it isn’t an easy thing to achieve: it can take years to build up trust, and only a single mistake to break it. And similarly, people or departments that have worked the same way for a long period of time can be resistant to change or new ideas.

Trust is a vital part of every single business. It’s the feeling that helps social relationships in the workplace be established, maintained, strengthened, and (where necessary) repaired. From chief executives to regular employees, and from experienced hires to new recruits, interacting with people and building trusted relationships in the process is part and parcel of successful work and business.

Research any business these days, big or small, and they’re more than likely to have some ‘values’ proudly displayed on their website, on their social media channels, or even on the walls of their offices. But do these values actually mean anything?

If you asked the average employee about the values of the business they work for,

Trust is the bedrock of every type of interpersonal relationship, from married couples and best friends through sports teams and professional collaboration. But the last of these examples is different from the others, as trust has to permeate between people with differing levels of seniority and responsibility,

Are you finding your meetings and collaboration lack energy? And that people are reluctant to stand out from the crowd and share ideas, because they’ll be judged and castigated for bad ones? That may well be because there isn’t enough trust between them, or throughout your workforce as a whole.

The employment landscape has been experiencing a constant and dynamic evolution in recent years, and the issue of trust between employers and employees has become increasingly important.

Edelman’s Trust Barometer surveyed 33,000 working people across 28 countries and found that a third of them don’t trust their current employer.