HR Strategies for Employee Engagement (Collection), Second Edition

9. Cultivate the Risk-Trust Dynamic

Employees must trust management and, reciprocally, management must trust employees. Case study after case study shows that where there is trust, “great places to work” can flourish. As I talked about in earlier chapters, great places to work are not the organizations that become famous for putting out bowls of free M&Ms or letting employees take extra personal days. Historically, great places to work are organizations where the culture of engaged employees—and the policies that sustain and engage them—creates a competitive advantage, lower turnover, consistent stock growth, and market share growth. And a key workplace component that underpins all of these is trust.

Trust is nothing more than the willingness ...