The Evidence-based Value of Trusting Your Employees
Working in a corporate has many pros and cons wherever you are on the ladder of command.
One thing which has become apparent is the distance which has been created between the person at the ‘top’ and the staff on the shop floor. This doesn’t need to be judged as a good thing or a bad thing. Again, many pros and many cons.
However, this sprawling chain of command which looks like a crazy family tree, and this distance created, has meant that the ‘boss’ no longer knows the first name of the vets and nurses, their value, their personalities and therefore how much they are to be trusted.
Years ago, when the ‘boss’ was a member of the shop floor team too, the trust which ensued through close relationships, frequency of meeting and daily mutual observations, created strong bonds between the people bringing in the money and the owner of the practice.
Gallup’s meta-analysis of decades of data from more than 100,000 teams (1) shows that high engagement (i.e. having a strong connection with one’s work and colleagues, and feeling like a real contributor), consistently leads to positive outcomes for both individuals and organisations.
The rewards for the practice include higher productivity, better standard of practise and increased profitability.
Work culture and employee engagement has been the focus of many workplace initiatives recently which is fantastic. Boosting employee mental wellbeing using positive psychology, mindfulness and other strategies has shown to improve retention and performance (Woodward, Laura: Mental Wellbeing and Positive Psychology for Veterinary Professionals).
So now that our employees feel more engaged and better ‘known’ by their employers, and they know that they are cared for as regards wellbeing, how to we keep them in that plane of progression, productivity and profitability?
The answer is Trust.
Trust
55% of CEOs think that a lack of trust between them and the shop floor staff is a threat to their organisation’s growth.
90% of them said that they didn’t know how to increase that trust. (2)
Employees in high-trust companies are more productive, have more energy at work, collaborate better with their colleagues, and stay with their employers longer than people working at low-trust companies. They also suffer less chronic stress and are happier with their lives, and these factors fuel stronger performance.
Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report: 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, 40% less burnout.(3)
Paul J. Zak used fMRI to measured brain activity of people while they worked. (3). He questioned why two people might trust each other or not. Its our old friend oxytocin again.
He found that oxytocin was responsible not only for joy and pleasure but also trust.
Zak created an experiment whereby people randomly chosen were given the opportunity to send money to a stranger for investment and growth. They measured the oxytocin blood levels in both the senders and the recipients of the money. The participants did not know the purpose of the study or the reasons for the blood sampling.
Zak found that the more money a sender sent, the higher their levels of oxytocin prior to the choice of how much to send, indicating that they benefitted from trusting someone.
Moreover, the more money a recipient received to invest, the higher their level of oxytocin, showing that feeling trusted increases oxytocin.
Then they gave the participants a nasal oxytocin spray (which does increase the blood oxytocin levels) and a placebo spray. All participants remained cognitively unaltered.
The senders of money who had received the nasal oxytocin spray sent vastly more money than the placebo group, indicating that oxytocin can increase ones trust in another person.
How to I increase this trust phenomenon in my practice, my corporate area, my organisation?
We know that oxytocin is associated with joy, sense of purpose and mental wellbeing from previous articles.
We know that stress is an oxytocin inhibitor.
Oxytocin increases empathy and empathy is essential if we are to be good vets and nurses, working effectively in large and small teams and caring for clients.
- Meaningful recognition of good work.
Recognition works best if it happens immediately after a goal is met, when it comes from peers and when it’s tangible, unexpected, personal and public.
The added advantage if its public, it inspires others to excel too.
How do I do this?
We have Teams, Group WhatsApp chats, group emails, it’s so easy to tick the immediate, peers, and public boxes.
Tangible, unexpected and personal can all be ticked by a small token (think crème egg, coffee), delivered by their line manager in the middle of a busy day.
This takes no time. - Give some autonomy
Delegation can be so hard to do. Especially if you would do the job better and faster yourself.
However, being trusted to figure things out, problem solve and see a task through from start to finish fosters employee engagement, retention, and productivity. A Citigroup and LinkedIn survey showed that nearly half of employees would forgo a 20% pay raise for greater autonomy over how they work.
How to do it?
Allow senior vets to offer to cap bills for clients, allow head nurses to authorise time off for others, allow receptionists to decide how the reception area should look etc.
By all means mitigate against possible downsides by having pre-agreed areas for autonomy, make sure everything is ethical and in the patients’ interest and then let go. - Enable Choice of work
There’s no point in making a nurse be on the surgical rota if she hates anaesthesia. Its dangerous for the patient, frustrating for the surgeon and most importantly not allowing that nurse to excel.
We all have a bias of interest be it ECC, imaging, client care etc. If we are trusted to choose wisely which role we prefer and get to focus in that area of work, we are more likely to excel at that role than if we are taken away from it regularly to cover areas where we have little interest, or worse, fear. - Ask for help
Asking for help is a very human thing to do and, paradoxically, it increases your credibility as a vet, nurse, or leader.
Asking for help is effective because it taps into the natural human impulse to cooperate with others.
By asking those ‘below you’ in the chain of command, you are showing a degree of vulnerability. This also stimulates the production of oxytocin in you and the staff members who help you. You can’t know everything. Often, the younger, newer, shyer member of staff knows more than you about something.
- Encourage social relationships
Encouraging friendship building increases oxytocin in your staff and colleagues.
In a busy hospital, having a chat about yourself in the middle of the day’s probably not possible. In the office, getting through the endless list of tasks and problems and firefighting leaves staff exhausted and desperate for the door.
In The neurobiology of Collective action, Paul J. Zak shows that when people intentionally build a social life at work, their performance improves. (5).
So, when you go to the pub after work even though you’re exhausted, or when as a manager you put money behind the bar or buy everyone pizza at lunchtime, you encourage this social connection.
We know that our social connection is as accurate a predictor of our mortality as is smoking, obesity or hypertension. (6)
So having a beer after work not only makes us happier, it can make us live longer. And if the manager pays for the beer or chips which increases our oxytocin we’ll be more productive too.
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/321725/gallup-q12-meta-analysis-report.aspxshows
- https://www.pwc.ro/en/press_room/assets/2016/ceo-survey-2016.pdf
- https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0297.00609
- http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/10/31/flexibility-at-work-worth-skipping-a-raise/?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
- Zak PJ, Barraza JA. The neurobiology of collective action. Front Neurosci. 2013 Nov 19;7:211. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00211. PMID: 24311995; PMCID: PMC3832785.
- Holt-Lunstatd https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
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