What Should You Do If You Lost Your Employee's Trust?

It's incredibly hard when a valued employee loses trust in you. It does not only bring up feelings of disappointment and failure, but it can also affect your business.

But it is not too late. You can still win back your employee's trust and make them a productive and valued employee again. But it would be best if you learned about forgiveness, restoration and forgetting. It's tough, but it's not impossible.

Recognise trust was lost. Do not argue about who was right or wrong.

Even the best bosses are not free from errors, and the first action to making it right is acknowledging it. You need to find the person you've upset, be truthful about the mistakes you made and explain the circumstances to them. 

You do not want to make excuses or try to shift the blame onto your employee. You want to go through your thought processes with your employee on a practical and emotional level to understand better where the mistake happened. 

Even the best bosses are not free from mistakes

Figure out why you lost your employee's trust.

It's crucial to understand how and why you lost your employee's trust. It would help if you asked your employee for constructive comments and feedback. Communication at this stage is vital, and you need to be accessible to them if you want to restore that lost trust.

Managers or employers are sometimes worried about receiving feedback from employees, but it will help everyone. If you disregard their words, you will only deepen the mistrust, and the relationship may no longer be salvageable. But, if an employee knows you'll listen and respond upon what they say, it can restore the trust.

Realise why you need to regain their trust.

Without trust in the office between you and your workers, it isn't easy to form a positive working relationship. Trust feeds into your company culture, and if there is no trust, your organisation will become toxic. A toxic atmosphere will lower productivity and profit, as well as increase staff turnover. You'll struggle to maintain existing workers and to recruit the best candidates for your organisation. But it's too late, word gets around fast, and the best candidates will not want to work for you.

Managing accountability & expectation.

If you wish to keep the trust between you and your employees, you need to be accountable for your actions. Please do not be ashamed of admitting when you were wrong and learning from it, since it's the mark of a good leader. But it would be best if you also continued to hold your employees accountable too.

You might have lost their trust, but they should not be able to behave as they like. A mutual atmosphere of trust requires accountability and responsibility that works both ways. Reward high performers and deal justly with poor performers through regular appraisals and performance reviews.

If the employees do not have clear expectations, they can also lose trust in the employer. Therefore, you should let your employees know of their responsibilities, how to do it and how it fits into the company vision. Once the employees understand what is expected of them, they will perform better.

You need to figure out why you lost your employee's trust before fixing the issue.

Forgetting and moving on

If you're going to keep bringing up the thing that caused a breach in trust in the first place every time there is a problem, then you're on a hiding to nothing. If you wish to regain your employee's trust long-term, then you need to forget about what caused them to lose it in the first place and concentrate on the future instead.

Source: breathe HR

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