What Role does HR Play in Helping to Maintain and Build Trust?

HR is the bridge within the organization when it pertains to trust.  Trust starts with HR, and how well they do it will determine how the rest of the organization follows suit.  When there is a level of trust and transparency employees will go to HR when they are having problems.  If that doesn’t exist employees will talk among themselves and come up with their own conclusion and not solutions.  Trust within an organization will encourage and allow individuals to speak freely without worry.  That leads to creativity where people feel a sense of fulfillment and pride for themselves and their organization.

The most important things that HR Professionals can do is to come out of their office.  HR is normally separated from the rest of the organization which doesn’t lend itself to being accessible.  Quite often because of this everyone knows when someone goes to HR which has a stigma attached to it.  Because HR is not seen enough and mostly when something is going wrong the perception is “something must be wrong or something bad is about to happen because HR is here”.

HR should know what is going on within the entire organization and the only way that happens is by walking around the organization.  If located in one place, time should be spent seeing how people operate during the day.  Building relationships with staff knowing who they are, what they do within the company.  How long have they been employed by the company, have they recently celebrated a milestone in their life?  All of these things bring about and indicate care that employees are valued within the organization. 

If there are several locations, HR should be visiting those locations and having one on one conversations with the employees working on the front line.  Often because of the corporate hierarchy employees feel that HR is only there for Executives and Managers and mainly for the company. When that is the feeling there is a level of trust missing and you often don’t find out things until it is way too late for a handling.

Most companies conduct exit interviews when employees leave the organization.  How many HR professionals are conducting STAY INTERVIEWS to find out the reasons why people remain with the organization?