Building Trust

In many ways, the employment relationship is like any other kind of relationship. Trust, for example, is at the heart of healthy marriages, friendships, partnerships, and employee-employer relationships.

From the employer's perspective, the million dollar question is: How does a company build trust with its employees?

There is no simple formula for building trust, but company policies can certainly play an important role. SAS Institute provides a great example.

SAS is the world's largest privately-held software company. Based in Cary, NC, the company had nearly two billion dollars in sales last year. SAS is well-known for their family-friendly culture. One thing that stands out is their sick-leave policy. Their policy is simple: If you're sick, don't report to work and they'll pay you anyway. That's it.

It doesn't matter if you're sick for a day or a week or a month. They will keep paying you. Most of us would assume that employees would take advantage of such a policy. At SAS, however, the average number of sick days actually used is less than 2 days per year.

The policy at SAS allows sick employees all the time they need to recover. More importantly, however, the policy communicates the fact that SAS trusts their employees not to abuse the freedom. Because of this trust, employees act in trustworthy ways.

Now let's consider a company at the other extreme. In October of 2001, managers at the Jim Beam plant in Clermont, KY decided that employees were abusing their freedom to use the restroom. They believed that employees were going to the restroom too often and staying too long.

I'm no managerial genius, but the first question I would ask in this situation is: What's so bad about the job that makes hiding in the restroom a more attractive alternative?

Instead of asking this question, the managers at Jim Beam adopted a policy specifying that employees would be allowed to use the restroom during three pre-determined break times each day and once at a time of their choice.

Supervisors were responsible for tracking restroom use and reporting the information to the human resources department each day. Six unscheduled visits could result in termination.

Within a year, this policy had attracted national attention. Connie Chung interviewed a Jim Beam employee on CNN and asked, "Are there a bunch of pinheads running Jim Beam?"

Because of the public outcry (and a citation from the Kentucky Department of Labor) Jim Beam abolished the policy, but the damage had been done. What kind of message did the policy send to employees (or potential employees)? The message was clear: At Jim Beam, we don't even trust you to use the restroom responsibly, so we're going to control your behavior with a policy.

Even after the policy was abolished I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that employee resentment remained. I also wouldn’t be surprised to find out that employees acted in less trustworthy ways while the policy was in place and after it was abandoned.

I’m not suggesting that employees should engage in this tit-for-tat behavior, but I do believe that employees (just like anyone else in a relationship) will act according to their treatment.

Many policies are intended to solve organizational problems. The danger, however, is that the unintended consequences may earn you the label of “pinhead.”