There are, in general, two attitudes that can be taken toward trust. The first is that you don’t trust anyone until they’ve earned it. The second is that you trust everyone until they lose it. Which attitude is correct?

There is, of course, the third attitude best expressed in the Italian Job: “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.” It is this attitude that I believe best reflects reality in the workplace.

Ideally, an employer should trust the employees, and vice versa. Employees should trust their boss to tell them what they need to know, and to keep them informed about the environment in which they are working. On the other side, employers should trust their workers to do their jobs, not steal from the employers, and so on.

In reality, we’re dealing with people, and therefore with human nature. Not everyone is trustworthy, but in an environment in which we work together, there must be some level of trust. How you define that level of trust is a personal issue, but it must exist.

In a healthy work environment, people trust one another, but also look out for the bottom line. An employer will trust his employees, but he will also be careful balancing his books to ensure he is not being stolen from. This isn’t an issue in regard to a particular employee, but in regard to all employees as a whole.

Likewise, workers may express trust in their managers to keep them informed, but that doesn’t excuse them from keeping their eyes and ears open about changes that they have not been told about.

The issue of trust should not exist on a personal basis, but on an environment basis. When asked if you trust a particular individual in the workplace, the answer should be yes. (If the answer is no, questions should then be raised regarding why that person is still in the workplace.) When asked if you trust the organization as a whole, however, the answer should be along the lines of as far as I can see them.

Related posts:

1. Full Disclosure
2. Rules of Work
3. Your Word is Binding

What struck me as being most interesting about these companies was the fact that it was recognized that a company’s most valuable assets are not any hardware or equipment it may own, but the people who work there every day. For that reason, these companies have looked to cut expenses in areas other than headcount.

The result of this is increased loyalty – in one case (NuStar Energy) employees showed up to work the day after a hurricane wreaked havoc on their city, destroying the homes of some employees. The employees are loyal to their employers, and will therefore go to greater extremes to help the business survive.

Investing in your employees is the only way to gain permanent loyalty. No, you don’t need to pay them more (another company froze merit-based pay increases for 6 months and still made the list of 15). But you do need to demonstrate that keeping the employees productive is important.

Another example is Mercedes – the car manufacturer’s CEO and executive team (28 people) took a salary reduction in order to avoid layoffs. This was following other reductions to costs, resulting in a stronger company in which the employees are loyal to the company, and costs have been brought under control.

What these companies demonstrate is that even in tough times, it is not necessary to reduce headcount in order to survive. Other costs can be reduced, employees can have their workloads redefined to make them more productive to the bottom line. When the economy rises, the companies that managed to maintain the loyalty of their employees will find themselves much better positioned to grow in the new economy.

Related posts:

1. Importance of Happy Employees
2. Slow Economy and Developing a New Business
3. Mathematics of Hiring