September 2002 - Fostering trust in the workplace

Just over a week ago I collapsed after a long walk in the Yorkshire Dales. Unable to breathe properly and with severe pains shooting down both arms, I was convinced I was having a heart attack. It did not take the ambulance people long to work out that I had been hyperventilating. The cure for this kind of attack is to breathe into a paper bag. It seems a piddling kind of response when you're expecting the bells-and-whistles treatment that goes with a cardiac arrest.

There was something faintly embarrassing about the whole episode. People who had been massaging my legs and trying to keep me conscious as I croaked a few last words found themselves witnessing my Lazarus-like recovery in the arms of para-medics who assured me that hospital was unnecessary. I felt a bit of a fraud.

For the record, a pain down the left arm, not both arms, is a more accurate sign of a heart attack. I must remember this in future. I shall also remember the generosity of spirit among those who helped me. After a summer in which human tragedies have dominated in the media, the experience proved a strong personal reminder that the vast majority of people in this world are only too happy to help each other.

With so much latent goodwill in society it seems odd that so many workplaces should be dominated by mistrust. The proliferation of information technology, if anything, is creating greater mistrust than ever. Research carried out for Websense*, a San Diego company that sells software for monitoring, filtering and blocking web access to employees, found that one in four of 305 employees questioned admitted he or she was addicted to surfing the web at work. The research by Harris Interactive, which also canvassed 250 human resources managers, found that, on average, employees were spending the equivalent of a working day each week visiting non-work- related websites.

Although the research was promoting the company's sales pitch that website filtering could be an important management tool, the nub of such research - and similar studies on the time wasted by employees sending personal e-mails - is that employees cannot be trusted to get on with their work. The same premise supports absenteeism monitoring and, for that matter, many of the regulations covering corporate reporting. The apparent frauds at WorldCom and Enron are timely reminders of what can happen when trust is abused or ignored.

The instant response to such events is to tighten regulation, to call for stronger corporate governance and to increase the checks and balances. Sooner or later everyone is going to be watching everyone else. Is this what we really want? This kind of workplace neurosis once spread through the Ford Motor plant in Detroit in the early days of automated assembly, when company spies called "spotters" were recruited by the company's sociology department to monitor washroom breaks and the personal habits and trade union affiliations of shop floor workers.

In the early 20th century, managers became used to measuring the output of individual employees under the principles of Frederick Taylor, the work-study pioneer whose ideas, with those of moving assembly, would help to transform manufacturing industry. A century on, Taylorism continues to thrive in modern businesses. Moreover, it has spread from the factory floor to the sales department and the management suite. It stalks the HR department, underpinning performance measurement, and is a persistent obstacle to initiatives for improving human relations.

The human relations school, pioneered in the 1920s by such luminaries as Elton Mayo and Mary Parker-Follett, made a convincing argument for extending greater trust to employees. When production line employees were consulted about their work at Western Electric's Hawthorne Plant in Chicago, they responded by increasing their production. Human relations management is about taking a genuine interest in the work of all employees. Martin Long, the founding chairman and chief executive of Churchill Insurance in the UK, understands this, insisting that he and each of his senior managers and directors spends nine days a year - called "in-touch" days - doing the jobs of front-line and support employees in different departments.

If employees are spending too much time on personal affairs at work it may be because they are bored with their jobs. Rather than monitor internet use and absenteeism it might be best to concentrate on the content of individual jobs. Is there enough variety in the work? Could the job be accomplished at home? Is it a job that can be assessed easily in terms of results? If so, and if the employee is producing the work required, why does it matter how long they spend on the internet? The real problem is that too many managers have become remote from much of the work of their staff.

The result is that employees are losing commitment, particularly in the UK, which lags behind European partners such as Spain Germany and Italy, according to a report issued this week. The report, by International Survey Research, looked at various factors influencing employee commitment among client companies in 10 of the world's largest economies. Taking into account employee assessments of management, development opportunities and the opportunities to manage their own work, Japan had the lowest rating, followed by China and the UK. The US and France had average ratings and the highest was reported in Brazil.

The factors in such research may be transient. The low Japanese ratings, for example, are likely to reflect the low ebb of the Japanese economy. But one thing seems clear: despite a century of accumulated management knowledge, many companies have still to equip themselves with an enduring philosophy of people management. Perhaps the real problem is management itself and its refusal to loosen controls. Perhaps the extension of more trust, not less, in the workplace would be rewarded by more committed and inventive workforces.

But trust is an elusive commodity. It does not sit easily in the capitalist system that often equates trust with gullibility and naivety. A system that seeks to profit from transactions finds it difficult to adjust to the co-operative nature inherent in a trusting relationship. Trust is a simple human quality, fragile yet powerful. It flowers naturally among colleagues who often become reliant upon each other. It cannot be easily taught in business school. But its value to society is boundless. In business its power is immeasurable.

The basic humanity of trust may be at the heart of the problem with employee commitment. Managers can become so obsessed with monitoring that they forget the human issues at the heart of the business.

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