Earning trust quickly is a challenge when your colleague is on the screen.

The rise of remote work and virtual teams has accelerated the demand for trust while also intensifying the challenge.

Fewer ad hoc social interactions between team members means people have less chance to demonstrate the three core elements of trust: benevolence or psychological safety; competence, and dependability or integrity.

Teams and high performance expert Rob Cross says the loss of face-to-face, complex communication means mistakes could be made more easily.

As Senior Vice President of Research for i4cp and Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, Cross says misintent or misunderstandings were common with the loss of social cues from remote work.

“It really cuts across all three forms of trust,” he says. “You might mistake when somebody’s committing to you, or mistake their abilities to do something, or you mistake their intent in what they’re saying. I think that’s a big deal.

“Also, the transience of people moving across organisations more rapidly and shifting across roles inside organisations more rapidly [creates challenges]. There’s less time to just rely on serendipity and hope to build trust in different places.”

Eroding social bonds

Remote work has created a raft of challenges for HR, including employees struggling with lower motivation, informal learning and engagement.

Social bonds are eroding, with Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report finding 67 per cent of Australian and New Zealand respondents were emotionally detached from their employment.

About 11 per cent were classified as “loud quitting” and actively disengaged, demonstrating a breakdown in trust between employees and their company. Daily anger and stress were reported by more hybrid employees than those based onsite.

While employees are keen to retain the flexibility of the home-office location, organisations are seeking new ways to overcome its constraints.

This comes back to clear and consistent systems to enable productive work and impact, coupled with regular feedback that is actioned.

“You might mistake when somebody’s committing to you, or mistake their abilities to do something, or you mistake their intent in what they’re saying. I think that’s a big deal.” – Rob Cross, Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership, Babson College

Cross says some people are naturally more adept at rapidly earning trust, by providing proof points to demonstrate their competence.

“They have a tendency to issue some kind of evidence like, ‘Okay, here’s what we’ve done before, how could this apply here?’ They also talk about the boundaries of their expertise versus what they’re good at. This all creates trust more rapidly.”

When social cues are lost, we need systems

At an organisational level, more formalised structures, processes and even metrics can be implemented quickly to support people to form trusting relationships within their teams, says Cross.

“We have the analytics. I can go out and see where trust is breaking down, but companies haven’t adopted it yet,” he says. “As time goes on that will become an important feature that allows people to see [if they are] curating a culture of trust or not, and what do they need to do.”

What is not working are the attempts from many organisations to impose electronic surveillance of remote employees, termed “productivity paranoia”.

Research published in Harvard Business Review found the monitoring for control eroded supervisor-subordinate relationships and could be counterproductive.

“Our results show that when supervisors used monitoring for control purposes, employees were more prone to engage in deviant behaviour (e.g., time thievery, inattentiveness, cyberloafing, tardiness, etc.) and their performance decreased,” the report says.

Instead, Harvard Business School expert in leadership Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, says trust must be explicitly and deliberately built in remote environments.

“You’ve got to name the reality of uncertainty and interdependence as a challenge, then problem solve together to figure out the best strategies for overcoming it,” she says.

She points out that trust and psychological safety must be paired with accountability, or a sense of psychological ownership and commitment to excellence, to generate effective performance.

This type of framework involves clear, regular and constructive communication between members of remote teams.

Starting with an explanation of the challenge and an appeal for shared responsibility, managers can then lead their teams in building trust by being open and candid themselves.

Edmondson says managers should also be vigilant to group dynamics and provide feedback and ongoing input to maintain transparency.

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Work-life balance or blur?

The transition to remote working over the past decade – from phones to the internet and mobiles, and now fully remote practices – has blurred the line between people’s work and social lives.

This raises the structural risk that the trust and reputation earned by a company over years of effort may not be demonstrated by an individual worker dialing into a meeting when in “home mode”, for example, from the train or from home.

Melbourne Business School Professor of Leadership Will Harvey said there is an increased organisational risk of misalignment of words and deeds.

“You’ve got to name the reality of uncertainty and interdependence as a challenge, then problem solve together to figure out the best strategies for overcoming it.” – Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

“There is a blurring of boundaries,” he says. “What people say and do, and how they behave outside of the work context, could actually create some tension between what that organisation is trying to do in terms of projecting both internally and externally.

“There is a risk that they undermine some of the messaging of the organisation.”’

He says HR professionals must make people aware of the risks and urge employees to carefully consider their actions outside the workplace.

Solutions to build trust

To reap the benefits of a high-trust culture – be it remote or in person – you first need to assess if there are potential risk areas to be aware of. With this information at hand, you can put measures in place to mitigate the risk of polarisation. Edmondson and Cross, plus other experts cited in this HBR article, share some insights.

Consider: Are there any existing weak spots in your culture that could grow into larger challenges, such as criticisms of certain leaders?

Actions to take:

• Identify groups that are standing on pre-existing fault lines, and design programs to bring them together on a regular basis.
  
• Encourage different employees to speak up each time you host a meeting, so people become more familiar with other voices in the company.

Consider: Do employees know what kind of behaviours are likely to build trust? Do you train for these skills already?

Actions to take:

• Help colleagues see each other as people to go to for transparent, credible expertise.
• Actively encourage colleagues to critique each other’s work in a safe environment.
• Help people connect over non-work matters.
• Coach team members to admit what they don’t know.

Consider: Are we inadvertently encouraging a culture of virtue signalling or zero-sum thinking?

Actions to take: 

• Appoint a ‘devil’s advocate’ in each meeting (and change this person each time) to normalise healthy dissent.
• Recognise and reward people who share their differing opinions in appropriate ways.
• As a leader, ask others to poke holes in your ideas and share alternative approaches.

AHRI members will have access to further discussion on the topic of trust, featuring insights from Amy Edmondson and Rob Cross, in this month’s edition of HRM Magazine. Not yet an AHRI member? Sign up today to receive a bi-monthly print magazine and access to a range of other benefits designed to support your HR career.