Many times managers fail to motivate their employees to align their individual goals with the company’s goal. It is hard to achieve the team goal if the employees do not trust the company’s vision. In this blog, we will discuss the consequences of employees losing trust in the company’s vision. Also, we will go over reasons why employees do not trust the company’s vision and how to get employees aligned with the vision.
What is Vision?
A vision is the future of the company that the organization desires to achieve over a certain period, generally in a time frame of five to ten years. It describes the meaning and the purpose of the organization to its employees and the stakeholders. It is the destination for the organization designed to express the fundamental reason for the organization’s existence.
Reasons why employees do not trust the vision of the company
Edelman published a survey report titled “Trust Barometer” (a survey of 33000 people in 28 countries) where it has been found that one in three people do not trust their employer. This report shows a catastrophic scenario in the workplace where the employees lose trust in their employers, CEOs, and higher-level executives. In a low-trust work environment, people become unreliable, inadequate, disloyal, inconsistent, and uncommunicative, creating a highly stressful and undesirable work environment for all. Let’s have a look at the reasons why people do not trust the company’s vision –
1. Lack of communication
The leader needs to communicate with his team regularly. Regular communication helps the team to understand the organizational vision and values clearly. It also helps them to believe that the whole team is working towards the same objective. If the company depends solely on the annual performance appraisal, the employees may not have a clear picture of the overall vision. Thus the employees will lose their confidence and trust in the vision of the organization. Also, the communication needs to be transparent and meaningful. If the employees fail to understand the guidelines of their leaders, they will lose trust in them. So, the quality of content is crucial while communicating with the team members.
2. Highly dependent on subjective performance evaluation
Some organizations evaluate their employees negatively based on subjective evaluation, even though the result of their objective evaluation is good or even exceeds the expectation. But in most cases, the supervisors are unable to provide better informational feedback about all of their subordinates. Because in this case, the supervisor can be biased. Thus, subjective performance evaluation can negatively affect relations between supervisors and subordinates and reduce subordinates’ trust in their supervisors.
3. Unequal Treatment
If the employees feel that they are treated unequally, their trust can fall. They can be upset, disloyal, and even scared due to this practice. If the organization treats its employees unequally, their morale and productivity level goes down. The employees can be mistreated based on their age, race, marriage and civil partnership, religion or belief, and sexual orientation. Also, if the employees are stuck in their same position years after years and do not get opportunities to improve their position, they start doubting their company. In the long run, this unfair treatment increases employee dissatisfaction, and they stop believing their employers.
4. Passive-Aggressive practices
When the employers practice the strategy of “management by fear”, they fail to create trust in their employees. Self-motivated employees want to work in an environment where they can feel that they are independent. Close monitoring and fear of punishment can lower their trust in the team. There are many.
5. Wrong Leadership
Promoting or selecting the wrong personnel in leadership positions can have a catastrophic impact on the employees’ trust in the company. When an ineffective person is promoted to a leadership position, longstanding employees can lose trust in the “succession plan” of the company. They can also feel that they are intentionally suppressed by their supervisors.
Consequences of employees losing trust in the company’s vision
Gallup research published a report that records high employee engagement for US workers involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace. But that high only tops out at 34%. The report proves that the majority of the workforce is still not involved, meaning they have low trust or no trust in their company/workplace. Now, let’s go over the consequences of employees losing trust in their company –
1. Dysfunctional workplace
When no trust exists, there remains no cooperation. Also, everyone tries to escape that place. So, the workplace has become dysfunctional. When the employees do not trust their leaders, the leaders lose control over them. So, the organizational process breaks down, and the working environment becomes indisciplined.
2. Feelings of insecurity
In a low-trust work environment, employees feel insecure about their progress. When the employees lose trust in their leaders, they think that their leader will not evaluate them rightly. So, they lose enthusiasm in their work.
3. No innovation
A low trust work environment may result in “toxic” work culture. No one feels inspired to work every day in such an environment. Without trust in the organization, they just do the job requested of them, and they’re not likely to go above and beyond to help create a high-performance organization. Thus no innovation happens.
4. Decreasing brand loyalty
Employees having no trust in the company do not plan to stay long. So in this situation, the business can experience poor customer/client service satisfaction and declining repeat business and brand loyalty. It can also lead to declining profits.
5. Lack of ownership
When the employees don’t trust, they don’t feel the ownership. They are only concerned about doing the assigned tasks but not about the outcome. So, they might have a long list of work in their report but no real accomplishment—also, lack of ownership results in poor productivity.
6. High Employee Turnover
Low trust results in dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction create a high turnover of employees. When employees lose their trust, they also lose interest in work. So they spend more energy on self-preservation and job hunting than performing at their job.
7. More dissatisfied employees
Once the employee loses trust in the company, they start doubting their Career Growth, skills development, job security. These make them dissatisfied with their job and the organization as a whole.
To read a similar blog, click “7 reasons why HR system fails”
How to get Employees Aligned with the Company Vision
When the employees are aligned with the company’s vision, it helps the organization achieve a higher performance level. Employee involvement is arguably the most important thing to achieve the organizational vision. Here we will discuss how to get employees aligned with the company’s vision –
Empowering employees: Empowerment increases satisfaction, and satisfaction results in high trust. To align employees with the vision it is essential to empower employees to make their own decisions about the best way to solve a problem, creating the company’s signature brand of exceptional customer experience.
Make employees aware of the vision from day one: To become aligned with the company’s vision, the employees must hear it at all times. They should be aware of the vision from the very first day of their recruitment and then bring it up consistently throughout their employment.
Clarity of communication: The communication should be clear, transparent, and understandable so that the employees can understand how they will overcome the difficulties. The leader should make sure that there is no room for misinterpreting or misunderstanding regarding the corporate goal. The employees should also be clear about their future, meaning the succession policy of the company is transparent. So, the company should create an open door policy where everyone can easily share their feedback with the leaders.
Relationship development: A good relationship with the leader increases the trust in him. So, a leader should take time to build a good relationship with every employee of his team. It will increase the level of trust and employee engagement significantly. The leader should be open to everyone to express their opinion whenever they want To create such a kind of relationship with the subordinates.
Employee engagement: Engaging employees in the decision-making process increases their trust in the organization. If the employee is involved in the decision-making process, they have become a part of the decision and give their best to bring out the expected results. This way, they think of themselves as a part of the organizational vision and work together with the same objectives.
On the contrary, a strong team is built on the foundation of trust. When trust does not exist, it becomes difficult to achieve any common objective. So, it is a significant responsibility of a leader to increase the trust of their employees towards the organization and get them aligned with the company’s vision.
Informative