Employers and trust

As of late I seem to have had discussions with friends and family about employers and trust. One of my friends who is a teacher wanted to get into her school to do some work on the weekend. The school is locked and teachers are not permitted in the building. My wife is a librarian that works for a public library.  Although she brings work home when required, she is unable to enter the building at specific times early in the morning or late in the evening, yet the I.T. department and other ‘senior’ people have full access 24×7.   I find the general lack of trust disheartening.

My first ‘real job’ was at a major financial instituion in Canada.  My boss was a extremely smart man, who had been at the bank (and had some agreement in place with them to stay).  One of the duties of my new employment was to enable internet access for ‘approved individuals.’  I received these paper forms signed by the employee, their manager, and the managers VP.  I would then give that employee permission to access the internet.   The first thing my boss did  while explaining the ‘granting internet access’ part of the job was tell me a story that I have remembered to this day.  He was pretty much giggling at the stupidity as he told me the story.   It went like this.

When he started at the bank, there was not a telephone for each employee.  Rather there was a phone in each area that was shared by several employees.  Shortly after he had started at the bank, there was a project to upgrade the phone system.  This new system had the ability to give everyone a phone at their desk.  Many managers and executives were concerned that this would be the end of the employees working effectively.  After all, they would all be talking on the phone all the time, phoning long distance at the cost of the company and more.  Production would go down and costs would go up.  The phones were deployed to every desk, but special permission was needed to have the ability to dial long distance.  As with the internet above, forms were filled out if you wanted to have long distance access which had to be signed and approved by managers.  Logs were given monthly to staff where they were to identify the calls they placed that were personal and which were business related.  These were then signed off by their manager.  The administration of this became to time consuming and costly and eventually the company abondoned it,  giving everyone long distance and simply managing the abusers.  Most recently, the new ‘concern’ is blocking of social networking sites and personal email sites for fear that people will be distracted and productivity will decrease.  Does anyone see a pattern?  I sure do.  I am reminded of this story.

Personally my view is that my employer trusts me.   Several people interviewed me, they checked my references, my past work.  They did all they needed to do to make the decision that I am trustworthy.  By hiring me I assume that is the case.  You trust me to do the right thing, you trust me to use company resources wisely, you trust me to not steal, or otherwise harm the company, and based on that you will act appropriately towards me.  If you don’t, then we have a problem.  If you treat employees like children they will act like children or they will resent the fact they are being treated like children and not trusted.  Either way, it doesn’t help moral, doesn’t help them make the right decision to work the extra time to get that project done, or to think about the cost of a particular meeting, conference or expense to the company and if it is necessary or there is a cheaper alternative.   Doesn’t make them feel valued or trusted — all these are not good.  Fortunately for me, the company I work for has these values, trusts their employees, and treats them appropriately.   I only hope more companies start to figure this out.

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