(From Business 2 Business) -- In any relationship trust is an important factor and this is especially true in the business of managing people. Trust is not a given, it must be earned. Trust cannot be simply earned through words, even as important as words are. Employees observe your behaviors and judge based on what they see you do compared to what you say. Do your employees believe what you tell them?

Why does employee trust matter?

There are a couple of big reasons to want your employees to trust you: performance and profits.

_Performance

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We all want our employees to strive for excellence. We want the top performance they can muster to help us grow our businesses and drive our companies into the future. If your employees can’t trust you to make the best decisions, do what you say you will and look out for their best interests, they’ll feel unable to rely upon you and it will reflect in their work ethic. They will spend time trying to compensate for your perceived un-trustworthiness by exerting time and effort thinking about how to do their tasks (rather than asking you), which takes away from their production, quality, creativity and their time on task.

Your employee’s lack of performance could also reflect on you. Isn’t human resource management the art of getting things done through others? If you can’t command top performance from your people, what does that say about you as a manager to your bosses? What will you do about all the time that will be spent following up with your employees when they’re delivering less than excellent results?

Profits

Good performance begets good profits, bad performance leads to less than ideal profits. If your employees don’t trust you and they are not working up to their potential then it stands to reason that your profits are not at their maximum potential as well. You can measure the cost of all the wasted hours from an underperforming employee, but far worse is the loss of employee ideas and creativity that a trusting employee would impart to you. The benefit of a trusting employee shows in their devotion, advocacy and performance.

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