Building trusted teams during times of change

29 July 2024 Consultancy.uk

The balancing act between autonomy and micromanagement can be tough to navigate, particularly in large-scale change programmes where there are multiple moving parts at any one time. Entec Si CEO Eman Al-Hillawi explains that finding that all important trust sweet spot can be the key to ensuring successful project delivery, employee retention and overall satisfaction for both manager and worker. 

As with any relationship, professional or personal, it takes time and work to build trust for both the employer and the employee. Despite this hard work and dedication, trust can be broken within seconds, making protecting it imperative - or face employee dissatisfaction, low levels of productivity or high staff turnover. While it may seem like a simple solution to provide employees with complete autonomy over their workload, there are key foundations for trust that need to be laid that will ensure a sturdy, reliable relationship between employers and employees.

The best way to ensure work is completed to a high standard is through setting clear expectations at the beginning of the change journey. This might be done through mutually agreed key performance indicators (KPIs). Examples of effective ways to measure performance include considering how often reporting should be completed, levels of client satisfaction or overall return on investment for the client.

Building trusted teams during times of change

Other considerations include setting out a budget and timeframe that should be adhered to throughout the programme. Whatever the expectations are from employers, they should be defined prior to project commencement and revisited in regular touchpoint meetings over the change journey to avoid confusion and ensure employee productivity remains at a high level.

During a change journey, it might be easy for the workload to take over and for communication between employer and employee to break down, not ideal for a workplace aiming to craft trusting relationships. One of the fundamental building blocks of trust is communication and should therefore be a priority for any professional relationship within the workplace.

Being a leader, whether at a managerial level or above, holds a great deal of influence within the workplace, making it essential to act in a way that inspires and encourages other employees. When leaders within the business are open and honest with their communication, even during particularly busy periods, it allows for employees to be open in return which can help to identify pinch points within the business, or areas of low employee satisfaction.

Taking a proactive stance in communication may be as simple as sending a weekly update email to all employees, highlighting the progress of the transformation so far so everyone has a holistic overview of the entire project. Other tactics include holding regular all team meetings and encouraging conversations within the team through talking points shared before the meeting, or anonymous feedback forms which are regularly consulted and addressed, to ensure workers their voices are heard.

Trust is built both in and outside of the office environment but despite this, many managers do not actively encourage after work or out of office team bonding such as team socials. Instead, team bonding exercises are often kept for corporate company away days. Not only does encouraging team bonding regularly improve staff morale and increase productivity, but it also helps employees foster relationships outside of the typical working day.

Since the rise of hybrid working, there has been a significant decrease in ‘water-cooler’ moments. This is an issue as conversations such as these are often credited for sparking new ideas and fresh creativity, making team building or staff socials an essential part of any workplace calendar to unlock team collaboration throughout a change journey.

A productive employee is one who feels heard, empowered, and trusted to conduct their work without the need for any managerial micromanagement. Instead, managers should consider adopting the role of ‘mentor’, allowing employees to have more autonomy over their own work and acting as a source of guidance rather than dictatorship. Not only will this approach empower workers and increase productivity, but it will also free up more time for managers and leaders to focus on the delivery of a change project, ensuring that it can be delivered on time and to budget.

More on: Entec Si
United Kingdom
Company profile
Entec Si is not a United Kingdom partner of Consultancy.org
Partnership information »
Partnership information

Consultancy.org works with three partnership levels: Local, Regional and Global.

Entec Si is a not a partner of Consultancy.org.

Upgrade or more information? Get in touch with our team for details.