| TRUST: The Key Ingredient to Keeping and Building Your Best Staff |
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| Written by Dianne Crampton | |||
| Tuesday, 26 February 2008 10:57 | |||
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If your best employees don’t believe trust is a key ingredient for your staff, you can be sure they will develop a roving eye for other employment opportunities. For public benefit organizations with small administrative budges and tight staffing, losing a good employee can be a substantial loss of your trained and competent workforce.
Trust is the belief and confidence in the integrity, reliability and fairness of a person or organization. It applies to all relationships including partnerships, work teams, and not-for-profit staff and volunteers. Trust is an essential human value and is the oil that keeps teams functional when conflict arises. It is difficult to acquire, and if spoiled, harder to salvage. People become nervous and defensive with one another if any of the following occur:
Likewise, threats of being fired no longer hold employees in a headlock. For one reason, baby boomers are retiring leaving massive gaps in the workforce. For another, talented employees have options. Leaving an organization to find another because of irreconcilable values is the mark of a good leader - a badge of honor. According to a survey released by ORC Worldwide, a New York-based provider of management research is that finding, developing and keeping talent are among the top concerns for 62% of the HR Executive survey respondents in 2007. This means that employers will be searching hard for new employees. In their article, "The Surprising Economics of a 'People Business'", consultants Felix Barber and Rainer Streck argue that trust is necessary in people-intensive businesses because employee performance drives overall organizational performance. This is especially true of service oriented organizations and any enterprise that comes into frequent contact with the public. Trust also has a dynamic impact on group problem solving. For example, group problem solving tends to break down in low trust environments and becomes creative and productive in high trust environments. Some examples of high trust work environments are:
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About the Author: Kurt Martin is a Founder and Group Publisher of Progressive Media Group (PMG) and the Publisher of Nonprofit Technology News. During his 4 years as Publisher of The NonProfit Times, he grew the imprint from a single newspaper to a community of websites, online job boards, email newsletters and digital editions of the print editions. Prior to taking the role of Publisher he was the East Coast Sales Manager for Broad Daylight, Inc. a knowledgebase company. He also held management roles in advertising and ciruclation sales at American Banker/Bond Buyer (Thomson), Faulkner & Grey (Thomson) and SourceMedia (Investcorp.) Kurt graduated from Montclair State University with a B.A. in Political Science and Public Administration. |