The U.S. presidential election is just one of 65 global elections in 2024 that promise to have a significant impact on the lives of employees.

Just how big of an impact is election season having on workers? One in three workers say they . Nearly half (45%) of employees say their employers’ or colleagues’ political .

That doesn’t mean that employers should completely avoid the topic.

Promoting civic engagement and reminding employees of their . Employees have been clear about wanting their company to share their values, and say in surveys that they .

For great workplaces, the key is to know when and how to get involved.

Our experience working with companies on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work ForÂŽ list reveals three important lessons for communicating effectively with employees during challenging times.

1. Determine the “tipping point” for taking action

Establish clear criteria for the business about when the organization will address an issue like an election. Bring in your employee resource groups (ERGs) to offer alternative perspectives and ensure that leaders don’t overlook important employee experiences.

Make sure that leaders at all levels of the organization are trained and given resources to have compassionate conversations with employees. Consider creating action guides, or leveraging peer-to-peer mentoring to help leaders prepare for difficult conversations.

Empowering middle managers is essential. Frontline leaders often have the most direct contact with employees and therefore have more of an impact on trust during uncertain times.

2. Match your message to your audience

The needs of leaders are not the same as the needs of frontline workers or individual contributors. Remote employees need a different level of engagement compared with employees who report to the workplace every day. Global workforces are comprised of many different local experiences, and great workplaces find a way to meet individual employees where they are.

When addressing anxiety around disruptive global events, focus your message on the things that won’t change for employees, such as your company values or available support resources. Be honest about what you don’t know but offer certainty where you can.

3. Build your message on core company values

Great workplaces have a set of guiding principles and behaviors that shape expectations for employees and responsibilities for leaders. When addressing external news events, start by emphasizing these values and how they drive your decisions to engage (or not) with a particular topic.

Reaffirm how the company will support employees and celebrate how colleagues are supporting each other. Remind employees of the resources available through their benefits or employee assistance plans — even when there is no crisis on the horizon.  By consistently demonstrating care for employees, leaders can send a signal that their support and engagement are constant, not reactionary.

Do your homework

Here are six questions you can ask before communicating with employees to investigate whether you are ready to speak up on a topic:

• Does this issue align with our core values and mission?
• How does this issue affect our employees, customers, and stakeholders?
• Who within our organization has the credibility and relevant expertise to speak on this topic?
• What are the potential long-term impacts of making a public statement or taking action?
• Is this the right moment to address this issue, or would it be more effective to address the topic in a different context?

When leaders engage thoughtfully, they build trust and boost morale across the organization. Reducing uncertainty improves employees’ psychological and emotional well-being, and clearly articulating shared values helps every employee feel like they belong.

Communication is one of the primary functions of a leader at any level.

That doesn’t mean you have to be a great “talker” with the affability and style of a used-car salesman. Instead, you have to be a strategic, empathetic, and tireless sharer of the information employees need to hear.

To be someone that others will follow, you must communicate your vision, share updates about progress toward your goals, and make sure every employee knows how they are expected to contribute to those goals. That’s why “speaking” is one of the nine high-trust leadership behaviors ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇÂŽ has identified as the keys to building trust with employees.

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“Speaking is more than what you say and who you say it to, it is how you share information,” writes Michael C. Bush, CEO at ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇ. Is your message getting to your desired audience, and is your message delivered in a way that your target audience can easily follow?

Great workplaces share timely information in a variety of channels and formats, ensuring employees understand the bigger picture behind business decisions and promote a culture of transparency.

“Consider your receptionist,” Bush says, pointing to a role that is often invisible to top leaders in the organization. “Whenever you speak with them, reiterate, emphasize, and clarify how important their job is. When someone walks in a building or contacts a receptionist on the phone, that’s a connection to the brand. In a few seconds, a caller or visitor either feels cared for, important, and listened to, or they don’t.”

What great speaking looks like

Here are four best practices that ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇ Certified™ organizations follow to ensure leaders are sharing information broadly and fairly with every employee in the organization:

1. Meet employees where they are, through channels that fit their work and habits

A company should meet employees on their terms, and savvy leaders know that not every employee is going to read an email newsletter.

At DHL Express, a social intranet tool called Smart Connect offers a one-stop shop where employees can find relevant news, strategic updates from management, HR documents and information, a job portal, and more. The tool also has a social wall where everyone can share stories, photos, and videos. The app has more than 100,000 users across the DHL workforce.

World Wide Technology knew that employees on the floor of its integration centers did not have access to regular communication platforms like email or online chat. To reach these deskless employees, the company launched an SMS texting system, ensuring these employees received important business updates and safety notices.

For companies like industrial gases manufacturer Messer, reaching populations like drivers out on the road comes with unique challenges. They need to deliver important information, but do not want to distract their workers while they are driving.

For drivers, each day starts with logging into a company system to check their route for the day.

“When we want somebody to take an action, we’ll put a little pop-up message onto the system because we know our drivers will log into it every day,” says Jem Janik, people and culture communications manager at Messer Americas.

Pop-ups have also been added to HR systems so employees find them when updating their time sheets. Text messaging was added after the team heard from a leader in the engineering services group that their team was more likely to text one another than send an email.

2. Prepare managers to share important information one-on-one

“Speaking” doesn’t require radical transparency. Rather, leaders who are great at speaking think carefully about how information is released throughout the organization.

Regular one-on-one meetings with a people leader ensures that every employee has a personal connection to management and feels that a leader is considering their individual needs. At CarMax, an Associate Connection Plan Guide was developed to ensure regular meetings occurred for every employee at each of its stores.

When sharing information about pay and performance, WP Engine considered how employees would use pay information, not only about their roles, but roles that they hoped to get later in their careers.

The company shares pay range information with employees in the relevant job family, and pay range information for internal opportunities that an employee might be qualified for.

To be successful, WP Engine had to train managers to have one-on-one conversations about pay with employees.

“Some managers are uncomfortable with difficult development conversations, so they’re going to be uncomfortable with difficult pay conversations as well,” says Priya Bhavsar, senior director of total rewards for WP Engine. “But it’s exactly the same thing, because your pay is representative of your performance: how qualified you are for the job, how you’re growing in your role.”

3. Curate the amount of information you share with employees

Great leaders have to also know when they are sharing too much information. Expecting employees to sift through all your communications to find relevant messages doesn’t signal an awareness of their needs and challenges.

Sheetz, a convenience retail chain based in Pennsylvania, took steps to simplify its communication by mapping the employee journey using focus groups to identify all the communication touchpoints. The retailer then simplified, using UKG’s mobile app to streamline corporate communication with hourly employees and removing managers as gatekeepers to communication.

The company also launched an internal communications strategy to create clear guidelines for communication channels, identifying the audiences they serve and the types of information that should be shared through each channel.

4. Set an example with leaders and vulnerability

Leaders can build trust when they demonstrate vulnerability. Great “speaking” includes sharing candidly with employees about challenges facing the business.

When Camden Property Trust had to reorganize and eliminate some roles, the property developer knew it had to bring employees into the process from the beginning. In the face of change, it’s crucial to acknowledge the elephant in the room, says Allison Dunavant, VP, organizational development.

 â€œAcknowledge the change and ask your team members how they’re doing,” Dunavant says. It’s also important to acknowledge when you don’t have all the answers.

“No one expects you to know all the answers or even understand how a change might impact somebody else,” she says.

Rinse and repeat

Great workplaces and the leaders that create them understand that effective communication requires patience and repetition. A message hasn’t been meaningfully shared until it has been digested by your target audience.

The best leaders are those that send messages through a variety of channels, with a focus on consistency and clarity. It’s often just when you’ve exhausted yourself from repeating your message that your point finally starts to sink in.

Benchmark your workplace culture

Find out how your workplace culture stacks up against the most reliable benchmarks available via ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇ °äąđ°ůłŮžą´ÚžąłŚ˛šłŮžą´Ç˛Ô™.

Anyone can be the culture leader that every workplace needs to start building high-trust culture.

One skill set that can help: strong communication skills.

We spoke with Caryn Best, senior vice president, marketing & communications, for IAT Insurance Group about her career and work building a better workplace culture.

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Best has good advice for anyone trying to promote their employer brand: “The brand must start from the inside.”

Read on for career advice, a book for your reading list, and more – part of our new community spotlight series “How I Got Here”:

What was the hook that first got you interested in workplace culture?

Best: I started my career at public relations firms. Clients hired us to help them promote their brand and products, but often there was a disconnect with how they wanted to show up externally and how their brand felt for employees.

I became increasingly interested in the connection between employee experience/culture with the brand image and market presence. Now, I firmly believe that brand must start from the inside.

What has been the biggest challenge you faced in your career when trying to build a great workplace culture?

Best: I had a challenging experience earlier in my career that ended up being a great learning opportunity.

I was heading corporate communications for a financial services company and the CEO decided that he wanted to build a culture based on a business book he read. I led the charge, crafting a program with a beautifully designed and executed communications campaign, only to have the effort fall flat.

The lesson: Employees must be engaged from the beginning to help inform the culture. No one person can decide what the culture should be and expect it to resonate with employees.

At IAT, we started with employee focus groups to help understand their experience of the place and that informed how we moved forward building a great culture. Employees have been at the center of it from day one.

What is the No. 1 lesson you have learned about what it means to be a great workplace in a post-pandemic environment?

Best: Keep listening to employees. Cultures are organic and always evolving. By keeping communication loops open with employees, the culture will continue thrive. The ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇ survey has been a key component for unbiased feedback from employees. 

How do you think artificial intelligence will change your work? Are you excited for those changes?

Best: Yes, AI is already having a major impact in marketing and communications. Primarily we are finding it can help save time with some tasks so more time can be spent on strategy, planning, and creativity.

What’s your favorite career advice you’ve ever received? Why?

Best: My first boss would say “leave them wanting more,” which continues to be helpful advice in a number of ways: messages should be succinct and memorable, presentations clear, you don't have to share every idea or thought that comes to mind in a meeting... 

What’s a recent book or podcast you loved that you recommend to our community?

Best: We recently had Ryan Leak deliver a keynote at our internal leadership workshop and he was fantastic. His book “Leveling Up” is a great read, full of practical advice centered around 12 questions to ask yourself that are simple, but powerful. Highly recommend it for self-awareness and continual growth.

What about your job makes you excited to come to work every day?

Best: My team! Playing a role in helping grow their careers is a privilege and they keep me inspired and motivated.

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how workplaces operate in the world today, what would it be?

Best: I’m biased as a communications professional, but I would love to see more companies and leaders recognize the very significant role that communications plays in culture. I’m grateful to be at a company that’s leadership prioritizes communications and feedback loops, but that is still unfortunately the exception and not the rule.

Want to join the conversation? Email Ted Kitterman to learn more about participating in our profiles series.

Find your community

Connect with other leaders looking to build a great place to work for all by attending our 2024 For All™ Summit, May 7-9 in New Orleans.

How you communicate with employees has a profound impact on workplace culture.

For Messer Americas, an industrial and medical gases manufacturer, building a better workplace required rethinking how it connected with frontline employees and the unique challenges it faced reaching this segment of the population.

“We have a very diverse employee population with job roles that provide a spectrum of connectedness,” says , vice president of communications at Messer Americas. “Some employees don’t have email or intranet access. Many employees do not spend their day sitting in front of a computer, so we have real challenges with reach.”

Other organizations might try to launch a podcast, or other media that workers can consume while completing their other work. Creating that level of distraction won’t work for an industrial gas company.

“We do not want our employees to lose focus when they are driving a truck or handling hazardous materials, like hydrogen,” Long says.

And Messer has other challenges when helping employees stay connected.

“With our frontline workers, it’s very unique,” Long says. “It’s not a traditional manufacturing plant where there’s 500 people in a big space and they’re using their hands all day.”

Most drivers work alone for hours each day, and some facilities only have a small group of people operating different shifts.

“The importance of connectedness is elevated in these groups that operate in the field and have less exposure to the corporate culture,” Long says.  

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Changing strategies

To solve these challenges, Messer has been experimenting with different ways of putting information in front of its frontline workers. For drivers, each day starts with logging into a company system to check their route for the day.

“When we want somebody to take an action, we’ll put a little pop-up message onto the system because we know our drivers will log into it every day,” says , people and culture communications manager, at Messer Americas.

Pop-ups have also been added to HR systems so employees find them when updating their time sheets. Text messaging was added after the team heard from a leader in the engineering services group that their team was more likely to text one another than send an email.

“We started using text messages to reach them, even if it’s just sending the leader the written content and asking them to send it out to the group,” Long says.

Similarly, company news was added to the company’s e-learning platform, since frontline workers frequently access this tool.

Measuring success

The changes have made a significant impact on Messer’s Trust Index™ scores, especially when the team looked at frontline employees.

Metrics on employee pride jumped nine points, and the number of employees who said they were kept informed about important business changes jumped six-points.

“That ties to communications,” Long says. “You’re seeing a similar percentage increase from our employees across the board — both in the office and the field. It shows that our efforts are working to reach our frontline folks.”

Now Messer’s comms team always works with HR to check their ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇÂŽ survey results before rolling out a new initiative.

“Anytime we go to do any sort of large endeavor now, we pull up our ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇ [results] and get a sense of how that demographic is feeling,” Janik says. “We use ˇĄłžąč°ůžą˛őžą˛Ô˛ľâ„˘ as a gut check all of the time … we’re regularly using it to know our audience.”

Connecting to purpose

More employees are reporting pride in their work for Messer in part because the team is doing more to connect employees to the purpose of the company.

“Industrial gases pretty much touch every industry out there,” Janik says. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re picking up a piece of electronics or you are grabbing a can of pop, the gases business is a part of the creation of all of those products.

Employees love hearing more about how our gases provide solutions essential to our world and lives.”

Tips for better frontline connections

Here are some tips from Messer’s leaders about how your organization can improve frontline communication:

1. Don't be afraid to try something new

“With communications, things are always changing,” says Long. “There’s a new tool, a new platform, it feels like every second.”

To evaluate whether something is a good fit for your employees, consider your audience. “If part of your population is still using a flip phone, it’s likely they are not on Instagram,” Long says. “You have to know how they want to communicate.”

2. Meet employees where they already go

Consider the technology your employees use, Long says.

Find the places where they already go to accomplish their work. “For those employees that use a time sheet, bring information to them there,” Long says.

3. Newer isn’t always better

A printed communication mailed home might feel old-fashioned, but Long says that traditional tactics still have something to offer depending on your goal.

“You are bringing the news to them in their home,” she says. “It touches their family. You get to build a sense of pride not only with the employee, but their family base. Some of those things are valuable touch points that still work.”

4. Find ambassadors to increase listening efforts

At Messer, a program it calls the Employee Circle allows leaders to curate feedback from a range of employees. Three or four times a year, a team of 11 volunteers commit to speaking with at least five other employees, in addition to providing their own feedback to leadership.

They are provided with an agenda or two or three questions, and their work consistently surfaces feedback that would never be captured in a survey.

“People will say to them, ‘Well, I'd never put this in a survey — but since I’m talking to my friend, I know you’re not going to sell me out,’” Janik explains.

5. Make it easy for leaders to connect

If you want frontline employees to feel more connected with top leaders, make sure they have resources to share important information with their teams.

“They know their team best, their workers are talking to them and engaging with them,” Long says.  “Make it easy for them to tell your story.”

Get more insights

Learn more strategies from our workplace culture experts at our For All™ Summit, April 8-10, 2025 in Las Vegas, NV. 

Even when making hard choices like laying off employees, companies can build trust with workers.

While research shows that laying the groundwork ahead of a layoff is crucial for building relationships with employees and preserving trust, there are options for companies once a layoff has taken place.

identified five opportunities for companies to build trust with workers during or after a layoff. More than half of employees surveyed agreed that trust could be built by:

• Encouraging managers to increase communications with remaining team members (58%)
• Offering generous severance packages (57%)
• Being more transparent about the reasons for a layoff (57%)
• Providing outplacement services to employees who are laid off (53%)
• Hosting firmwide meetings to highlight company commitment to remaining employees (50%)

While 80% of employees surveyed said layoffs negatively impact trust in companies, just 55% said the way their company conducted a layoff damaged trust. That gap paints a compelling picture for business leaders about the value of reengaging your remaining workforce after a layoff.

Giving employees a voice

Even at great companies, sometimes the business requires making the painful decision to eliminate roles.

At Camden Property Trust, No. 33 on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work ForÂŽ List in 2023, a need to streamline operations led to a reorganization starting in February of 2022. To keep employees informed and engaged, the company brought them into the process right from the beginning.

“In planning for our reorganization, we involved our on onsite teams and district managers in the decision-making process to determine what efficiencies and changes made sense for our business,” says Allison Dunavant, VP of organizational development at Camden.

Seeking employee input when making the tough decision to restructure or conduct a layoff can be daunting for business leaders. However, a commitment to deep listening opened new doors for Camden during the restructuring process.

“We recognized that with massive change, we weren’t going to get everything right,” Dunavant says. The only way to identify missteps was to engage with people at all levels for feedback.

“We did this through establishing working groups that involved all levels of employees, and solving issues that were important to them and important to the business,” Dunavant says.

“The message for us was ‘We’re listening.’" - Allison Dunavant, VP of organizational development at Camden

Building connection

Camden’s working groups offer an example of how to accomplish several of the goals ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇÂŽ research has outlined for companies facing a layoff decision:

• Reengage remaining workers around the purpose of the organization
• Offer a safe space for employees to work through challenges posed by workforce changes
• Increase touchpoints between managers and employees

Working groups at Camden were gathered right after the restructuring and immediately started offering feedback on processes that weren’t working. “They were honest,” Dunavant says. “We realized that the only way to eat the elephant is one bite at a time.”

“Remind leaders that vulnerability is OK.” - Allison Dunavant, VP of organizational development at Camden

The working groups also became essential partners for piloting new programs.

“We would give them some solutions and say, ‘Go try this out this week and bring it back to us next week. Let us know how it went. Talk to your teams, talk to your peers, see what they think,’” Dunavant says.  

As a result, the company was able to move much faster, and group participants were more engaged after seeing their feedback incorporated by the company.

“They’re also developing as leaders,” Dunavant says of group participants. “I’ve started to see a lot of these individuals as future leaders in our company, and they feel empowered to be able to make change because we’ve given them a space to do it.”

These working groups were so successful that Camden kept them even after completing its restructuring.

Participants in the working group deeply valued their opportunity to contribute to the future of Camden, and even saw the working groups as opportunities to reinforce relationships with their colleagues across the business.

“Our group is full of amazing leaders from all over the country, but we have one goal in mind: to improve our processes at Camden for our employees and our customers,” shares one general manager who participates in one of the groups. “This group fosters a safe, open space to talk about things honestly, to be real. And of course, in true Camden fashion, we also know how to have a lot of fun.”

Save the date: Attend our annual company culture conference May 7-9, 2024

Anxiety over a backlash

Why don’t more companies do everything they can to engage employees during a layoff or restructuring effort?

Listening is hard.

“The message for us was ‘We’re listening,’” says Dunavant, but stresses the importance of backing up that message with real listening programs. “Building trust is about delivering consistently — and that’s what we knew we had to do.”

Managers need resources and training to effectively respond to employee concerns in the wake of a layoff. Dunavant offered some tips:

1. Recognize the elephant in the room.

Start by addressing the concerns of employees when facing layoffs or restructuring. “Acknowledge the change and ask your team members how they’re doing,” Dunavant says.

2. Listen more than you talk.

“Be keenly observant of employees’ needs and offer encouragement and support,” Dunavant says. “Never say ‘I know how you’re feeling,’ because you don’t.”

3. Be honest — and admit what you don’t know.

“No one expects you to know all the answers or even understand how a change might impact somebody else,” she says.

4. Go beyond the survey.

“Put time and resources behind finding new ways and inventive ways to enroll them in the process of your future organization,” Dunavant advises.

Making surveys successful

Employee surveys are incredibly valuable in the wake of layoffs or restructuring. Surveys can identify opportunities for improvement, and ensure that workers remaining at your organization don’t disengage.

For leaders who are anxious about fielding a survey that might surface bad news, Dunavant recommends leaning into the discomfort.  

“It’s good for us to recognize the anxiousness,” she says. “Remind leaders that vulnerability is OK.”

It also helps to have a clearly defined purpose that can offer a call to action for both employees and leaders.

“The best thing a leader can do is recognize that change is hard — and enroll their employees in how to move through the hard,” Dunavant says.

Make sure you have resources to react and investigate the survey responses.

“Don’t engage in a listening campaign if you aren’t ready to recognize where you might have opportunity and be willing to make changes accordingly,” Dunavant warns.

Business results

When companies commit to listening while trying to reshape their workforce, the benefits go far beyond employee goodwill.

For Camden, engaging its employees to build a better workplace is a core part of its strategy to drive business results.

“The formula’s easy,” says Dunavant. “Engaged employees equals process improvement, which is a better customer experience, which leads to business results. Great employee experiences lead to great customer experiences.”

When you reengage employees in the wake of a layoff, you build trust that future layoffs are a last resort. When employees trust managers to do everything in their power to avoid a layoff, the business benefits. Employees are:

• 9x more likely to give extra effort
• 2x more likely to adapt quickly to business changes
• 4x more likely to stay with their company

With those results in mind, leaders should consider every opportunity to increase communication with employees after a layoff.

Start your survey

Want to learn how employees are responding to recent workforce changes? Use our industry-leading Trust Index™ Survey to identify opportunities to reengage your people.

I often get asked what it takes to create a great workplace. The short answer: trust.

High-trust cultures help employees thrive, which fuels company performance in all areas — from referrals and retention to productivity and revenue. 

It’s impossible to create a great workplace for all employees without trust. That’s what our 30 years of research about company culture has told us. And that’s why our survey that measures employee experience is called the Trust Index™.

Trust is woven into our daily interactions at work, just as it is outside of work among family and friends. It’s built on many moments — moments that our research has broken down into nine behaviors that can build or break trust. It’s a list I keep on my desk and check-in on how I’m doing as a leader.

Every leader should work on and improve these behaviors; if you’re not a people leader, you might be thinking, “What does this have to do with me?”

Leaders affect , but the other 30% comes from our teammates, how we work with others, and the actual work that we’re doing. It takes everyone in an organization to create a great workplace for all.  

Here’s where to begin: 

1. Listening

This is the most important behavior of all and what I focus on the most. If you’re not a great listener, you can’t model the other behaviors well.  

Listening is not just making sure you’ve accurately heard the words coming out of someone’s mouth. It’s also not just waiting for someone to stop talking so you can speak. It is choosing to empty your mind and set aside your opinions while someone else is talking.

True listening requires humility, vulnerability, and empathy.  

You may have a lot of opinions, but to be a for-all, inclusive leader, you must put those opinions aside. If you’re having a conversation and you’re not willing to consider other points of view, what’s the point of having the conversation at all? Letting go of your assumptions can be described as a meditative mindset, and that’s what makes a great listener.

How do you know you’re doing it right? You’ll find yourself asking questions because you’re learning something from the person you’re talking to. People will tell you that you’re a great listener because it’s rare to have a conversation with someone who’s deeply listening.  

Listening might sound reactive, but it should be proactive. Make yourself available and seek out chances to listen.

Think about who you haven’t heard from lately — and then go ask them questions with a learning mindset. Schedule informal meetings like brown-bag lunches and Q&A sessions. Use surveys and focus groups to regularly elicit employee opinions — and follow up with feedback and action.  

"Listening is not just making sure you’ve accurately heard the words coming out of someone’s mouth. It’s also not just waiting for someone to stop talking so you can speak. It is choosing to empty your mind and set aside your opinions while someone else is talking."

2. Speaking

This is what we do all day. But there are many layers to what might seem like a straight-forward behavior. 

Speaking is about clarity, frequency, transparency, and sharing information fully in a variety of ways. That includes regularly sharing company news with employees through all your channels — video, intranet, email, print, etc. Be sure to share that news (both the facts and feelings around it) internally before you do externally.

It’s not just about what you share, but who you share it with. Be mindful of those who haven’t heard a message and need to know what information is being shared.  

Speaking is more than what you say and who you say it to, it is how you share information. Communicate thoughtfully and with care, and in easy-to-understand styles. Set up regular meetings to discuss what’s happening and personally share news to encourage a culture of transparency as much as possible.

Lastly, speaking is an opportunity to communicate how a person’s job — and how doing their job well — is essential for your organization to achieve its purpose. 

Consider your receptionist, for example — a role that is often overlooked. Whenever you speak with them, reiterate, emphasize, and clarify how important their job is. When someone walks in a building or contacts a receptionist on the phone, that’s a connection to the brand. In a few seconds, a caller or visitor either feels cared for, important, and listened to, or they don't.

Speaking is the ability to talk to every warehouse worker, every receptionist, every salesperson, every executive, every teammate in a way that they feel that doing their job is important for the organization to achieve its purpose. And if you’re not sure what someone does, this is your opportunity to build trust by getting to know them.

"Speaking is more than what you say and who you say it to, it is how you share information."

3. Thanking

If you’re listening to people in the way that I described earlier, you’ll learn things about them. That helps you thank your colleagues in ways that are personally meaningful. Acts of gratitude let people know you’re listening in a way that shows they’re important and essential.

Create a culture of appreciation by recognizing good work and extra effort frequently.

Opportunities to do this are endless: Encourage peer recognition, present employee awards, write personal notes, appreciate mistakes as learning opportunities, and recognize employees who demonstrate company values in person and in front of others.

Creating a culture of thanking will positively affect people’s sense of value and willingness to do their best work because they feel seen.

4. Developing

Listening and speaking helps you learn how someone can further develop personally and professionally.

It’s your job to help employees grow as people, not just performers. Nurture their talents and interests through courses (job- and non-job-related), tuition reimbursement, and personalized development plans and training, for example. Connect employees with mentors and inform them of internal job postings.

Try and give feedback in a way that’s measurable, so they know they’re improving, and with a sense of care, so they’re open to what you have to say. 

When people know you care — even if they don’t always like hearing where they need to improve — they’ll take it as a gift. Everybody wants to get better. Yes, they know it leads to more money, more compensation, and more responsibility in the company. But, at a base level, they want to know they’re making a difference.  

"It’s your job to help employees grow as people, not just performers."

5. Caring

This is the secret weapon. Great work happens when people care. And people care about their work when they experience being cared for. That shows up when you take time to understand and listen to people’s experiences, inside and outside of work.  

Support their personal lives by discussing options for flextime and personal leave policies. Help them cope with family and personal crises as they arise, and organize support through sick leave or monetary donations. Encourage work-life balance and remind them to take time off to recharge.  

Do you know what makes an employee check an algorithm two or three times, or proofread an email six or seven times? It’s because they care about the purpose of the organization, they care for others, and they feel cared for.

Caring is what unlocks people, and it is key to maximizing a human’s potential.  

"Great work happens when people care. And people care about their work when they experience being cared for."

6. Sharing

Distributing profits, compensation, bonuses, and incentive plans fairly creates an equitable workplace. If you’re building trust for all, every employee needs to share in the company’s success and understanding how their performance relates to compensation.

Equitable and inclusive sharing also shows up in philanthropic activities. If you’re organizing community activities like a cleanup at a local school, or picking up plastic off a beach or park, make sure that everybody has the opportunity to participate.

If you’re doing those things between eight to five, what about the night shift worker? Make sure you’re truly inclusive in terms of sharing opportunities for people, as well as the resources of the organization.  

Equity does not equal sameness. A picnic for the day shift doesn’t also have to be a picnic for the night shift. What is the purpose of the picnic? To bring people together, to show them their value, and create opportunities for them to interact in informal ways with their leaders.

So how can you create this same experience for this night shift without recreating the same event?

7. Celebrating

The most important things to celebrate are the values of the organization and how people help the organization achieve its purpose.  

It’s important to be specific:

“We want to thank John for the work he did in helping a customer through a sticky problem. We wanted John to do that in seven minutes, but John took 20 minutes because the customer needed it at that time. At our company, we’re willing to do whatever is required to make the customer’s problem our problem, and we’re willing to do what’s required to solve it. I also know that John was late for getting to a soccer practice for his kid. I hope John doesn't have to do that again, but I want to appreciate the fact that he did that for us.”

If you find yourself celebrating, recognizing, and rewarding the same person, communicate to everyone what it takes to be celebrated and recognized so they don’t feel there’s bias or favoritism. They’ll know if they work hard in some measurable way, they too will get celebrated, recognized, and rewarded one day.

"The most important things to celebrate are the values of the organization and how people help the organization achieve its purpose."  

8. Inspiring

You don’t have to be a great public speaker to inspire people. You can inspire people with the questions you ask and the way you listen.

You can inspire them by reaffirming the difference your organization makes in the world and why the work is important. Help your workforce understand how their work relates to the company’s higher purpose and business success.

You can do this by telling customer or client stories, sharing the vision of where the company is headed, pointing out behaviors that exemplify company values, reinforcing company values, stressing your company’s contribution to your industry or society, and showing links between employee efforts and achieving your goals.

"You don’t have to be a great public speaker to inspire people. You can inspire people with the questions you ask and the way you listen."

9. Hiring and welcoming

When someone joins your organization, you should make sure that they know you were expecting them — and that you couldn’t wait for them to get here.

You need to make sure that they have a workplace, can access the systems they need to connect with their work and their colleagues, and have the equipment to be successful. Their laptop is ready, their uniform is ready, their steel-toed boots are ready, their safety goggles are ready.

This goes beyond hiring; it’s what we call welcoming. You can email or send new hires a note in the mail before they start, announce them to other employees in advance, take them to lunch their first week, and help them get integrated into your culture.

When a person joins an organization that has shown that they’ve been thinking about them for a few weeks before they started, they will go home and say, “It was a great experience today. They expected me, my name badge was ready. Everybody was kind, and they seemed to know who I was and what I was going to do.” These actions build trust on their first day.

If someone gets to work and those things aren’t true, trust dips a bit. Self-confidence drops. They wonder if you really want them there, or if they’re an afterthought.

And the worst case — they feel like they’re just an employee and not a person who’s important, because if they were important, they would’ve had a much different experience when they arrived. 

Whether or not you manage people at work, I encourage you to put this wheel of nine high-trust behaviors in a place where you will see it every day.

Trust takes work and conscious effort. And it’s required to create a great place to work for all.

Become great

Ready to learn more about your employee experience? Benchmark your organization using °äąđ°ůłŮžą´ÚžąłŚ˛šłŮžą´Ç˛Ô™ and see how you stack against the very best.

But avoiding the subject altogether can undermine employee trust, inclusion and belonging at work. And these experiences are crucial for things like employee well-being, innovation and productivity.

Courageous conversations in the workplace are about broaching complex and sensitive subjects like race and privilege with your team, boss or HR manager.

They are the sort of conversations that can stir strong emotions, which might feel out of place for work, and they require careful and mindful discussion.

Why is it important to have courageous conversations in the workplace?

“Courageous conversations in the workplace are part of developing a learning culture,” explains Tony Bond, EVP chief diversity & innovation officer, ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇ^ÂŽ.

“These conversations lead to a better understanding of the needs of others, such as Black employees. They enable leaders and employees, both Black and non-Black to become more comfortable having dialogue around race.”

Worrying about adding salt to wounds or saying the wrong thing are reasonable concerns. Still, they are fears you need to take on if you, your team, and your company want to move forward in the middle of a crisis (such as that teeny global pandemic that is still going on.) 

So, here’s what to do: talk about it. Together. Now.

And guess what? It will help. A lot.

I know it will because we had this discussion twice since the murder of George Floyd, once with our management team and then with the entire company. The benefits reported by employees were huge. 

Folks shared their feelings of relief and said talking to their peers helped them feel less alone. One man learned that even people who look different from him shared the same fears. 

Another woman said her family discussions were so charged, it was a relief to get to share her feelings calmly. Many parents talked about the hopes and fears they have for their children and the tough dinner table discussions they’d been having.

Opening up the conversation validated people’s feelings, gave them a new and psychologically safe outlet and helped everyone feel cared for.

So, here’s a quick guide for setting up what might feel like a difficult discussion. It works best if the whole company participates, but even talking at the team level can help.

How to lead courageous office conversations

1. Set your intentions clearly

The goal is to provide a secure space for every person to share their experience, whatever it is, not to fix or solve anything. All feelings, concerns, hopes or anxieties are welcome. This is a time to share questions and concerns and to provide an opportunity for everyone to ask for support.

2. Create a container

Set up dedicated time to have this talk, at least 60 to 90 minutes,. Make sure everyone is expected to join and participate. If you're a leader, express how important this conversation is and support your team to clear their calendars. This works great on video conferencing technology to ensure everyone is physically safe.

3. Prepare facilitators & groups 

You should start together in a large group and then break into groups of about six to eight to for conversation, so prepare your breakout groups carefully.

If you have a high-trust environment where employees can have respectful conversations about tough topics, then less structure will be needed.

If your organization has low trust; if COVID, race or politics are charged topics for you; or if there is a wide variety of thought, feeling and opinion across your business, more facilitation and organization may be needed to create a positive experience.

The goal is to ensure that each person feels they can share freely without judgment or criticism, even when individuals may disagree. Designate a facilitator who can manage that kind of discussion for each group.

4. Set it up

Start your meeting together, with a senior leader sharing the intentions and ground rules with everyone. Focus on the company values that are appropriate to this discussion (for example Care and Be Curious are the two ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇ values most appropriate to this experience.)

Ask everyone to keep the specifics of who said what confidential—we can share the discussion generally, but it’s better not to quote individuals, to avoid misrepresenting them.

Then split into your groups. Our Chief Diversity & Innovation Officer Tony Bond created these simple discussion questions to get us started:

• Check in with each other
• How are you experiencing what’s happening?
• What are you confused about?
• How can I support you?
• How can we support each other?
• How do you find hope to keep going?

5. Open with vulnerability

Each facilitator should set the tone by opening with some personal truth and vulnerability. Participants will take their lead, and determine how safe the space is, from the leader’s openness and honesty.

6. Have the discussion

Keep the focus on sharing personal stories and feelings. Ensure that each person gets an opportunity to speak at least once, if they want to. Help curb interruption and cross-talk to give open airtime to all.

And if folks hold differing opinions, that’s OK. But do not allow anyone to debate or negate another person’s personal experience.

When speaking about race, gender, religion, or any other demographic, do not ask a person to speak on behalf of a group they may belong to. For example, do not ask Black people or other people of color to explain racism, “tell me how I can help,” or share a list of resources to educate anyone else.

While strong feelings are welcome, including tears, there should never be an expectation that anyone in the group has to make another feel better.

7. Come back together and close

Bring the small groups back together and invite voluntary comments from anyone who wishes to share their experience. The senior leader should then close with gratitude for everyone’s participation and explain any personal resources available for folks that want them.

8. Support each other

If specific requests for support have been expressed, do whatever you can as an organization to deliver those. If a conversation went sideways in a breakout, the facilitator should call in your HR leaders and team leader(s) to help work it out or resolve it. Don’t ignore a messy problem: It’s better to get in there and at least try to make it right.

9. Keep it going

This is not a one-and-done situation. We will all need to keep having conversations about the state of the world for the time being. If this format works, great! If not, find or use whatever fits your company culture.

Moving forward

In my own personal experience, I did not want to have this conversation at the time. It felt hard and frustrating. But after having it, I feel clearer, calmer and more secure knowing it’s okay for me to be a real human and bring my whole self to work.

I know that my leaders and co-workers all care about me and my experience. And I got to tell them that I care about theirs, too. I built relationships with people I don’t know very well and was able to share some vulnerability and build trust.

Plus—if those valuable outcomes aren’t enough for you—productivity is a cherry on the top. After our courageous conversation, I could get back to work and focus in a way that certainly wouldn’t have happened without the discussion.

So be brave and go for it.

Tell us how your discussions went and what other resources you need. ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇ^ÂŽ is here to help you create a great workplace For All^™. 

ŇÝß[ŠĘ˜ˇłÇÂŽ leaders will convene a call every Friday for the next several weeks to work through the uncertainty and complexity caused by the novel coronavirus and its related economic impacts.

Let's come together to share what is on our minds and how we are approaching the challenges that the coronavirus presents in our work and in our lives.