Every manager and leader in an organization, regardless of industry, must be aware of the essential role your employees play in your company’s success. If this is not true in your company, you need to stop reading this right now and go address that issue first.
Oh good, you are still here. So, as we continue, ask yourself, “Have you ever considered the dire consequences that can result when the faith of your workforce in your company and its values begin to waver?”
While every company has a business continuity plan to deal with “disasters”, we tend to think of those disasters as limited to things like data breaches/cybersecurity attacks, natural disasters, and financial crises or economic downturns. However, the truth is, the loss of employee faith is a cataclysmic disaster that can strike any organization. It leaves a path of destruction behind it of dwindling productivity, stifled innovation, and compromised company culture.
Just like the other disasters, we must have a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) that includes how to identify crises of faith and, more importantly, provide the best strategies that will guide you to prevent such crises before they wreak havoc on your company’s future.
The Impact of Employee Faith on Business Success
What is employee faith? It is the belief and trust that employees have in their organization, its values, leadership, and its commitment to their personal and professional success.
The Impacts of Employee Faith
Productivity
Empowered and committed employees are more productive, leading to increased efficiency and better outcomes for the business. According to a Gallup study, highly empowered teams show 21% greater profitability.
Retention
When employees have faith in the company, they are more likely to stay loyal, reducing turnover costs and retaining valuable institutional knowledge.
Innovation
A culture of trust and faith encourages innovation and creativity among employees. It fosters an environment where employees feel safe to take risks and suggest new ideas.
Reputation
” It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.“
-Warren Buffet
Employee satisfaction affects a company’s reputation, influencing its ability to attract top talent and retain customers. Employees who no longer believe in their company will last out, usually via Glassdoor and other employment review sites. The result is that your employer brand suffers further choking your ability to find and hire quality candidates.
Why Have a Plan?
Recognizing the warning signs of eroding employee faith is crucial for timely intervention. You can’t fix a problem if you can’t prove its existence. Just like weather experts have tools like radar to identify oncoming meteorological disasters, you must use all the tools at your disposal to track and monitor these dangerous conditions.
Evidence of Crises of Employee Faith
” My only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.”
– Peter Gibbons in Office Space
Declining Employee Measures
Drops in employee performance across more than a few substandard performers could be a sign of trouble. This was often branded as “quiet quitting” over the past two years. However, this is not a low-volume warning. It screams at the highest decibels that there is a reason why your workers used to go above and beyond and now have withdrawn to the minimal requirements of their jobs.
Increased Turnover
As much as the “quit quitting” phenomenon has generated attention since the end of the pandemic, actual resignations from your company’s employment are far worse. Unexplained spikes in employee turnover may suggest a lack of faith in the company’s direction or leadership. The result is that you not only have to endure the cost of sourcing, hiring, and training replacements for such departures. You also incur the harder-to-document cost of losing the tribal knowledge that employees take with them as well as being set back by the potential growth that employees naturally experience as their tenure increases.
Negative Reviews and Feedback
While attention to things like Glassdoor reviews and internal feedback channels may help indicate that trouble in employee faith is brewing. There are other more subtle indicators. Consider:
· Have your employees decreased the frequency with which they are interacting with your company’s social media posts?
· Has the frequency at which current employees refer external candidates for employment at your company decreased?
· Has your workforce been previously one where multiple generations of families are employed and that has ceased to be the case?
Communication Breakdown
Lack of transparent communication and rumors can lead to mistrust and confusion. Communication breakdowns can serve as glaring indicators that employees have lost faith in their company. When trust erodes, employees may become hesitant to voice their concerns openly or share constructive feedback.
A lack of transparent and regular communication from leadership can leave employees feeling disconnected, uninformed, and undervalued. Rumors and speculations may start to circulate, further deepening the sense of uncertainty and distrust. In such an environment, misunderstandings are more likely to arise, leading to conflicts and decreased collaboration among teams. As employees perceive a lack of genuine interest in their well-being and growth, their motivation and engagement levels will plummet, resulting in a decline in overall morale.
Your Crisis in Faith BCP
Preventing your employees from losing faith requires action. A proactive approach, staffed with those that have sincere care for the company’s workers can foster a positive work environment and demonstrates genuine care for employees. Actions like those listed below can give employees renewed faith in the organization and reverse most, if not all, of the damage that such crises cause.
Recommit to your Company’s Values
The values that a company has must be more than a marketing slogan. They must be the statement of who the company is and what they believe. They must be evidenced in every action and aspect of the organization. If they are seen as phony or mere branding, employees’ faith will be challenged.
It is a good time to reevaluate your values and see how they are being evidenced in everything from the business outlook to how the benefits offerings are structured. Take the time to talk to employees about them and the genesis of how the ones that you have were selected as well as providing a concrete definition of them.
Communicate with Transparency
If you are only relying on annual or even bi-annual “engagement surveys” as the communication method to identify potential loss of employee faith, you must abandon that mentality immediately. The communication that must be occurring is between employees and their managers. Then, managers must be talking to each other. That way, small abnormalities that are being repeated in multiple teams can be given the priority they deserve.
More than merely communicating company goals or corporate updates, challenges, and decisions you should be empowering your employees to have a voice in the challenges and decisions that can help solve problems. You trusted these employees enough to spend thousands in recruiting them and training them, and you trust them in managing critical business events and relationships. Isn’t it time you started empowering them to help you move the needle toward success? Throughout this process continue to constantly encourage feedback and address concerns promptly.
Recognize Achievement
Don’t take your employee’s work for granted. Rather, Recognize and celebrate employee achievements. This does not have to be an elaborate or complex endeavor. Instead, a few sincere expressions of gratitude and respect can foster a sense of appreciation and validation, thereby reinforcing their belief in the company’s commitment to their growth and contributions. Acknowledging individual and team successes cultivates a positive work culture, where employees feel valued and motivated to excel, reducing the risk of disengagement and waning faith. By highlighting accomplishments, leaders demonstrate their attentiveness to employees’ efforts, creating a virtuous cycle of increased loyalty, trust, and dedication to the company’s vision and goals.
Invest in Employee Development: Offer training and development programs to enhance skills and demonstrate commitment to employees’ growth.
Prioritize Work-life Harmony
Promoting the healthy mix between work and personal life tells the story that you see workers as more than easily replaceable cogs in a machine. Provide tools and techniques for them to commit to the company without ignoring the demands that living in 2023 requires. Offer training and development programs to enhance skills and demonstrate commitment to employees’ growth. Focus on employee well-being with attention to their mental health. A study by the American Psychological Association found that employees with good work-life harmony are 21% more likely to feel engaged and empowered.
Lead by Example
“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.”
– Anne M. Mulcahy, Former CEO, Xerox Corporation
Avoid hypocrisy at all costs. If there are challenges that are making it difficult in your role as leader, you can rest assured there are those at lower levels with similar experiences and to pretend otherwise will erode the faith so necessary to continue forward. Demonstrate ethical leadership, integrity, and alignment with the company’s values. Inspirational leadership can inspire unwavering faith in your team.
Manage performance effectively. Performance management must be a continual conversation between employees and their managers. If it is being used only as an annual event, you will not be able to hear the alarm bells bad behaviors should set off until it is too late.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the loss of employee faith is the most significant disaster a company can face. It impacts productivity, retention, and overall success. By identifying early signs and proactively addressing employee concerns, business leaders can build a resilient and engaged workforce, fostering an environment where employees are motivated to contribute their best, and thereby securing the future success of their organization. Remember, investing in your employees’ faith is investing in the long-term prosperity of your company.
You are not alone. At Mercury Performance Group, a company helping organizations of 500 or more employees solve their HR problems, empower their employees, and elevate their performance, we believe in keeping employee faith and have prevent techniques to help mitigate such crises and help your company avoid them in the future. Contact us if you would like to get started on solving your problem today.