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I was driving around town the other day when a song came on the radio, that I had not heard in quite some time so I listened to it. The title (which is what I named this article) stuck with me after it faded into the next song. This phrase is something more than a refrain to a Billy Joel song: it is an intangible "glue" that holds any truly effective organization together. It occurred to me that with all the uncertainty going on with our economy and in many businesses, what may be keeping some employees tethered to their employer is a sense of trust that exists between worker and management.
So why is that important now? Now is the perfect time for any business owner or manager to improve upon their communication ability to their employees. With a looming economic turnaround coming sometime in the future, now is the time to reconnect (or re-recruit if you please) with your employees so the ones you want and need do not leave with the pent up hiring frenzy comes. Now is the time to invest in developing employees so they become more valuable to you. How? One way is to work to fulfill the employees "internal wants". Maybe they want cross training? Perhaps they want more inclusion in the work? Maybe they want to simply be appreciated. They want to feel valuable to the organization.
The June edition of the Harvard Business Review dealt almost exclusively on the idea of trust in the work place. One article mentioned Bill Campbell, a former college football coach who worked in the technology industry in the 1990's and was seen as an extraordinary manager. Campbell can also claim to be a close adviser to Steve Jobs. Some traits Bill Campbell displayed were:
- showed genuine warmth for all his employees
- openly displayed his trust of his employees
- rewarded accomplishments with person-appropriate responsibility
- backed his people up when necessary
- made himself visible and accessible
(Harvard Business Review, June 2009, p 50)
In short, he communicated to his employees. He showed his appreciation for them. He fulfilled his employees "internal wants" and made his area a great place to work and people stayed. What he was able to convey was a great sense of trust that he cared about his people and they knew they could count on him to do the right thing for them at all times. No small feat these days.
So what's the take away here? Use this time now before the looming economic turnaround we all hope is coming to communicate with your employees on how important they are to your business. Not only communicate with them; actually show it as Bill Campbell did so you either develop or strengthen that bond of trust between you and your workers. That bond could mean the difference between keeping a good employee and having to replace a good employee who just left. There is an awful lot that goes into this complex relationship called work, but it begins with building and continues with a rebuilding of trust.