education & business 13
What does trust in the workplace mean?
Trust in the workplace is being hampered by a lack of understanding of what it means, according to new research
Line managers who say they trust staff but don’t, pose one of the biggest challenges to organisations hoping to flourish, according to researcher Nick Marsden, assistant chief fire officer with Dorset Fire and Rescue Service.
Marsden undertook the study for his masters in leadership and management course at the University of Portsmouth, and won the University’s Business School prize for best research, sponsored by the Institute of Leadership and Management. His research has been published in Human Resource Bulletin: Research and Practice.
Marsden said: “It is easy to say we trust someone, but more difficult to enter into a trusting action which involves your becoming vulnerable or in some way at risk.“
Trust serves as the foundation for everything organisations do, but the
a line manager is clear about the boundaries an employee needs to work within and the employee is able to talk comfortably with their manager about mistakes and weaknesses without fear that this will be used against them.
Marsden said: “The importance of clear boundaries should not be underestimated. There is a great story about a study of children who were told to play in an open field, but stayed very close to the adults. When the experiment was repeated, with a fence around the field, the children played into every corner.
“We cannot expect people to push personal boundaries if they are not clear where they are in relation to those boundaries in the first place.
“Trust is very much determined at a local level. Our natural tendency is to limit our own risk, which means that we may over-control. Sadly, many existing managers cannot see that they are doing this, they want to maintain hierarchical controls.“
Nick Marsden receiving his MSc with distinction from chairman of the Dorset Fire Authority, councillor Rebecca Knox
difficulty is that the meaning of trust can sometimes be unclear, misunderstood or misused, he said.
As a result of Marsden’s research, Dorset Fire and Rescue Service has approached the problem by defining its own meaning of trust which, in essence, is when
His tutor David Hall said: “Nick’s research was inspired by what he saw and questioned in his own workplace. It was innovative and extremely insightful, and has allowed Nick and his management team to build on this in the workplace. It was an excellent piece of research.“
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