Podcast: Trust is a key element of the employee experience

In the previous piece, Catherine talks about how trust enhances leadership – and just about everything else.

I recently learned that employees who have high levels of trust towards their employer are less stressed, more energised and productive at work, take fewer sick days, experience more satisfaction with their lives and are less prone to burnout. Makes sense, right?

This means that trust is a key factor in measuring and maintaining an optimal employee experience (EX). But in 2020, fostering and maintaining trust in the workplace feels like a tougher challenge than usual.

How do you build trust between employees and their employers when most of your interactions are via video call? Or when you lose those genuine moments to connect – the walk around the block, the bumping into each other at a coffee shop.

In this episode of This Working Life (a podcast by ABC Radio National), Dr Paul Zak talks through how we can begin to foster greater trust in our workplaces. He has an acronym based on the so-called trust chemical, oxytocin:

• Ovation: recognise high performers
• eXpectation: design difficult but achievable challenges
• Yield: train extensively and delegate generously
• Transfer: facilitate job crafting
• Openness: share information broadly
• Caring: intentionally build relationships
• Invest: promote personal and professional growth
• Natural: be authentic and vulnerable