It is now into the 3rd year of the COVID-19 pandemic, still without a clear end in sight. During this time, companies made difficult decisions about whether staff should work from home, wear masks in the office, get vaccinated and regularly tested. Some are even staying within the workplace during the challenging periods.
Many companies are affected financially as the economy struggles, and business leaders have to contemplate with hard decisions to lay-off employees.
Business leaders have made calls amid changing conditions with official guidance that also keeps changing, and their decisions have run a real risk from trust building to trust breaking.
It is important for business leaders to rebuild trust with staff that has been undergoing much challenges.
Five Steps to Rebuilding Trust
Many of the decisions business leaders made during the pandemic has strained their relationship with staff, these 5 steps can support rebuilding trust and develop loyalty:
- Have Insight
Companies need to acknowledge and be responsible for actions that adversely affected staff members, including the unintended impact. Having good insight of these impacts shows staff members that the business leaders recognize that the decisions made have practical consequences and are recognizing what staff members have endured – This is the first step in repairing trust.
Verbalizing the negative emotions of staff members builds trust. Authentic leadership will be important to rebuilding this relationship. Sincerely letting affected staff members know that one recognizes and in some circumstances can understand the emotions of the staff provides some comfort and understanding on the part of staff members.
- Explain Actions
The most effective communication acknowledges responsibility, and to explain why the decision and action happened, and demonstrate plans to fix the damage. It is important to be transparent with employees. Explaining the reasons and context of why a decision was made, the option and alternatives that were explored and weighed, showing the pros and cons, and the challenges in making calls so that staff can more easily understand the logic that leaders contemplated in making these decisions.
- Gather Staff Feedback
Get direct feedback from staff members on what they think and what they need during challenging times like this current COVID-19 pandemic. This is obvious but typically not many companies gather such feedback.
These questions are useful to reflect upon staff members’ needs:
- How was your experience with COVID?
- How would you rate the management in managing COVID? And why?
- What are the top 3 the most important challenges we face in meeting your needs in this new-normal world?
Based on this feedback, leaders can develop action plans at 2 levels: Team and Individual. At the team level, leaders to ensure that each new policy made has a mechanism for staff feedback and can be adjusted for policies to be fair and beneficial, to minimize unintended harm. For example, making a mandatory requirement a certain amount of in-office work while the pandemic is raging can unintentionally penalize people who can work from home with equal if not more effectiveness than being in-office.
Individually, leaders should work with staff to address specific concerns and find out what types of support they need. For example, a staff member may wish to have flexibility in their work schedules during lockdowns to focus on learning and development. The ability to schedule such sessions in these challenging times enables them to do their best work and increase productivity when the lockdowns are released.
- Fixing the Problem
Leaders need to offer a solution to fixing the problem. A most effective element of rebuilding trust is not only explaining the problem/s but also an offer to repair the problem. One of the most essential part of trust rebuilding is actually fixing the problem.
- Empathy
In times of a prolonged crisis like COVID-19 pandemic, nothing is more important than engaging staff and demonstrating empathy of the tough calls made. The affected staff members will know that the leaders are emotionally involved in the decisions made and that staff members who have contributed in the past and who are now affected are valuable members of the team. The demonstration of empathy reveals authentic leadership, and rebuilds trust in a positive manner.
COVID-19 has changed our work and lives, and not every decision that leaders make will be the right one. Many leaders will make some bad calls that erodes trust significantly and some to the point of no-return, or a new workplace policy can cause unintended harm. However, leaders and the companies they serve can work to rectify lost trust and confidence. The above methods show the strength of character of leadership which forms the basis of rebuilding trust. Trust once broken, though difficult, it can be rebuilt, with effort and time. When it is successfully rebuilt, trust can return even stronger.
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