In my last blog post I mentioned that there are six pillars that help to build a healthy company culture. The topic I'm going to talk about today is related to two of them. Join me in this brief reflection to discover more about these two pillars along the way. (hint: italica).
Now, I'm going to ask you a question and you must answer honestly, okay? Think fast! Do you trust your employees? Yes or no, it's that simple. If you hesitate to answer, or answered a hesitant "yeaaah" or an obvious "no", you have a problem.
Because if you don't trust your own employees, how can you sleep at night knowing that these people are handling projects on your behalf, or contacting clients and providers as representatives of your brand? Without trust, how can you even implement disruptive people policies like remote work, asynchronous communication or a flexible schedule? Not to mention access to budgets and confidential matters.
We are all, or have been, someone's employee, so we know what it's like to have a mistrustful manager who is always looking over our shoulder to check if we're do the right thing at the right time; nobody likes that! An awful Employee Experience if you ask me.
You should be able to trust your employees, if only acting on your survival instincts (no one wants to live on antacids and melatonin if it can be avoided), but also because a healthy company culture should honor Freedom and Trust as two of their core values.
If you trust your employees you don't micromanage, you don't infantilize grown up employees, you share more than you keep. If you trust your employees, they will see it, feel it, and in return they will give to you new ideas, they will invest more passion and energy in their initiatives, they will nourish a healthy environment and they won't let you down when you need them. Trust works in both directions.
As Hubtype's founders, Eric and Marc always say: "Ideally we should be surrounded by people who know more than us". That's the goal of any good hiring process, right? Choose the best talent to join the company. Not only because of their technical skills, but also because they fit into your company's culture and meet your values. You can trust people who share your same mission and vision.
So it all starts with the very first step of the employee life journey; a good hiring process. Talent Acquisition is one of the pillars that will sustain your company. It may seem pretty obvious after reading this article, but you would be surprised how careless this process can be for some companies that have not done a prior exercise of reflection. This is another exciting topic that we will explore further in future articles. Bye for now, and thank you for reading!
