Working in a corporation has many pros and cons wherever you are on the ladder of command. One thing which has become apparent is the increasing distance between the person at the top and the staff on the shop floor. This doesn’t need to be judged as a good thing or a bad thing: again, there are many pros and many cons.
However, this sprawling chain of command, which looks like a crazy family tree, and this distance has meant that the boss no longer knows the first names of the vets and nurses, their value, their personalities and, therefore, how much they are to be trusted.
Years ago, when the boss was a member of the shop-floor team, the trust that ensued through close relationships, frequency of meetings and daily mutual observations created strong bonds between the people bringing in the money and the owner of the practice.
Years ago, when the boss was a member of the shop-floor team, the trust that ensued through close relationships, frequency of meetings and daily mutual observations created strong bonds
Gallup’s meta-analysis of decades of data from more than 100,000 teams shows that high engagement (ie having a strong connection with one’s work and colleagues and feeling like a real contributor) consistently leads to positive outcomes for both individuals and organisations (Gallup, 2020). The rewards for the practice include higher productivity, a better standard of practice and increased profitability.
Work culture and employee engagement have recently been the focus of many workplace initiatives. Boosting employee mental well-being using positive psychology, mindfulness and other strategies has improved retention and performance (Woodward, 2023).
So now that our employees feel more engaged and better known by their employers, and they know that they are cared for with regard to well-being, how do we keep them in that plane of progression, productivity and profitability?
The answer is trust.
Trust
Fifty-five percent of CEOs think that a lack of trust between them and the shop-floor staff is a threat to their organisation’s growth and 90 percent of them said that they didn’t know how to increase that trust (PwC, 2016).
Employees in high-trust companies are more productive, have more energy at work, collaborate better with their colleagues and stay with their employers longer than people working in low-trust companies. They also suffer less chronic stress and are happier with their lives, and these factors fuel stronger performance.
Employees in high-trust companies are more productive, have more energy at work, collaborate better with their colleagues and stay with their employers longer
Zak and Knack (2001) compared people at low-trust companies with people at high-trust companies and reported that people at high-trust companies had 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more energy at work, 50 percent higher productivity, 13 percent fewer sick days, 76 percent more engagement, 29 percent more satisfaction with their lives and 40 percent less burnout.
They created an experiment whereby randomly chosen people were given the opportunity to send money to a stranger for investment and growth. They measured the oxytocin blood levels in both the senders and the recipients of the money. The participants did not know the purpose of the study or the reasons for the blood sampling.
The study found that the more money a sender sent, the higher their levels of oxytocin prior to the choice of how much to send, indicating that they benefitted from trusting someone. Moreover, the more money a recipient received to invest, the higher their level of oxytocin, showing that feeling trusted increases oxytocin.
Next, the participants were given either a nasal oxytocin spray or a placebo spray. All participants remained cognitively unaltered. The senders of money who had received the nasal oxytocin spray sent vastly more money than the placebo group, indicating that oxytocin can increase one’s trust in another person.
How do we increase this trust phenomenon in my practice, corporate area or organisation?
We know that oxytocin is associated with joy, sense of purpose and mental well-being, and stress is an oxytocin inhibitor. Oxytocin increases empathy, which is essential if we are to be good vets and nurses, working effectively in small and large teams and caring for clients.
1. Meaningful recognition of good work
Recognition works best if it happens immediately after a goal is met, when it comes from peers and when it’s tangible, unexpected, personal and public. The added advantage is that, if it’s public, it inspires others to excel, too.
How do I do this?
We have Microsoft Teams, group WhatsApp chats and group emails; it’s easy to tick the immediate, peers and public boxes. Tangible, unexpected and personal can all be ticked by a small token (think crème egg, coffee), delivered by the line manager in the middle of a busy day. This takes no time.
2. Give some autonomy
Delegation can be hard, especially if you would do the job better and faster yourself.
However, being trusted to figure things out and complete a task from start to finish fosters employee engagement, retention and productivity. A Citigroup and LinkedIn survey showed that nearly half of employees would forgo a 20 percent pay raise for greater autonomy over their work (Feintzeig, 2014).
How to do it?
Allow senior vets to offer to cap bills for clients, allow head nurses to authorise time off for others, allow receptionists to decide how the reception area should look, etc. By all means, mitigate against possible downsides by having pre-agreed areas for autonomy, and make sure everything is ethical and in the patients’ interests and then let go.
3. Enable choice of work
There’s no point in making a nurse participate in the surgical rota if they hate anaesthesia. It’s dangerous for the patient, frustrating for the surgeon and, most importantly, not allowing that nurse to excel.
We all have a bias of interest, be it emergency and critical care, imaging, client care, etc. If we are trusted to choose wisely which role we prefer and get to focus on that area of work, we are more likely to excel at that role than if we are taken away from it regularly to cover areas where we have little interest or, worse, fear.
4. Ask for help
Asking for help is a very human thing to do, and paradoxically, it increases your credibility as a vet, nurse or leader. Asking for help is effective because it taps into the natural human impulse to cooperate with others.
By asking those below you in the chain of command for help, you are showing a degree of vulnerability. This also stimulates the production of oxytocin in you and the staff members who help you. You can’t know everything. Often, the younger, newer, shyer staff member knows more than you about something.
5. Encourage social relationships
Encouraging friendship-building increases oxytocin in your staff and colleagues. In a busy hospital, having a chat about yourself in the middle of the day is probably not possible. In the office, getting through the endless list of tasks and problems and firefighting leaves staff exhausted and desperate for the door.
One study shows that when people intentionally build a social life at work, their performance improves (Zak and Barraza, 2013). When you go to the pub after work even though you’re exhausted, or when, as a manager, you put money behind the bar or buy everyone pizza at lunchtime, you encourage this social connection.
Our social connection is as accurate a predictor of our mortality as is smoking, obesity or hypertension (Holt-Lunstad et al.,2010). So, having a beer after work not only makes us happier but can also make us live longer. And if the manager pays for the beer or chips, which increases our oxytocin, we’ll be more productive, too.
