Tech’s broken promises: 4 things every leader must get right to rebuild trust
Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash
Layoffs. Bankruptcies. Ultimatums. Things suddenly got very real for workers across the tech industry. How did the sector shift from leading workplace culture to letting people go? Each week brings another announcement of mass redundancies, and though the headlines focus on tech, the ominous ripple is felt across every industry. Post-pandemic recession, inflation and devaluation has forced leaders to think twice about how business operates in our next era of volatility and uncertainty. We’re all watching tech - will this bursting bubble spark wider disruption?
We see now that tech’s version of the future of work has been a lie. Seducing talent with high salaries, equity and lavish benefits was the emperor’s clothes of culture. It’s all pizazz and no substance, designed to keep employees productive rather than create opportunities to do meaningful work. The pandemic quickly eliminated most of the perks; no need for pillow rooms, sushi lunches or unlimited PTO when you’re working from home. The recent redundancies, and the speed at which companies have disposed of their most valuable asset, has reinforced that in tech putting people first was an empty promise.
Exhausted, quietly quitting, or regretting their own great resignation, tech employees are experiencing a colossal comedown. The experience that defined the last decade of work is now a distant memory, replaced with a relentless drive for performance to ensure survival. Not everyone thrives in that energy, and when people see their peers losing their jobs, workplace fun quickly turns to workplace fear. Uncertainty creates the conditions for an environment of low trust, “us vs them”, and watching out for myself vs working with each other.
Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer, the annual survey that measures trust around the world, offers a glimpse of how distrust is currently impacting employees:
85% of people rated job loss as their most troubling concern in society
63% of people worry we are being lied to by business leaders
Tech leaders will need to work to rebuild trust amongst their people. This is the time to double down on promises for a connected employee experience - and create an action plan for teams to reinforce belonging, transparency and active participation in decision making.
How trust gets lost in the employee experience
There are several ways that volatility in the tech sector is creating the conditions for low trust in the employee experience. We’re acutely aware of what’s going on in tech because the media spotlight is trained there but the reality is these conditions are present in many workplaces today regardless of which sector you are in. Which of these situations are you noticing in your culture today?
Fear of no longer being needed
Trust gets lost when people don’t feel they have control
The pandemic heightened our collective unease with uncertainty and our displeasure of having our freedom limited. When we hear about mass layoffs it triggers the potential that we too will lose our jobs, and then more (our home? our family? our sense of self worth?). This is happening alongside a perception of a challenging job market - if I lose my job today, where will I go? With roughly 1 in 3 U.S. workers saying they’re concerned their company is planning budget cuts or layoffs, employees are considering how they protect themselves against employers, rather than working for common goals.
Confusion over hybrid working
Trust gets lost when people cannot build strong bonds
Trust is built through personal connection which is made more difficult with less face time in our new hybrid working environments. While remote working is increasingly the norm (58% of employees sampled by McKinsey’s recent study said they could now work from home at least part of the time), leaders are still struggling with how to make hybrid work.
The constant flip between work from anywhere policies and return to the office mandates is a result of lack of trust that employees can work unsupervised or find creative ways to solve for hybrid connection.
“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in.” - Elon Musk, June 2022
Siloed collaboration
Trust gets lost when it's everyone for themselves
With market valuations down, and demands for profitability up, tech leaders have been asking more from their people. Managers are protecting themselves and their teams from scrutiny, resulting in dysfunctional collaboration as it becomes every team for themselves to avoid any blame for poor results. Tech’s mantra of “fail fast, fail often” doesn’t work if failure leads to firing. The fear of failure ensures lack of shared information, low transparency and poor communication which erodes trust.
Reinforcing the way your culture works through the promises of your employee experience will create a foundation to shift from low trust to highly connected teams.
4 promises leaders can make to rebuild trust
The “connection” lens of Within’s employee experience (EX) framework invites leaders to make clear promises to reinforce communication, create belonging and shape the rituals that bring people together in the employee experience. Your employee experience is like your constitution, setting out how the system of your culture works.
An EX promise:
Establishes the expectation for how the employee/employer relationship looks and feels
Is based on the idea of mutual value—the employer creating opportunity for individual employees to thrive and the employees playing an integral role in business growth
Supports the conditions for equity by creating a place where everyone feels valued
Can be measured and backed up with proof that the experience is being lived
When designing your EX we explore focus areas critical to building trust within the culture and collaborating more effectively. These four are relevant for all leaders, especially those in tech, to consider now:
1. How we communicate openly
Lack of information fuels mistrust, but giving teams access to the information that they need to do their job increases autonomy. Promises made here demonstrate what quality communication looks like and hold everyone accountable for transparency. At a time when employees will feel information is being withheld from them, especially following rounds of job cuts, timely clear communication is key.
2. How we belong here
Tech has struggled with diversity, historically having significantly fewer women and people of color than other industries. Feeling like you belong within a culture helps individuals to thrive, and study after study has demonstrated that diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones. New talent will be looking for promises in this area as a foundation of a company’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and to trust that the business looks to include everyone.
3. How we have meaningful rituals
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke recently announced that “meetings are a bug” and that to start 2023 they were “canceling all meetings with more than two people” in order to “give people back their maker time”. Six months ago the company laid off 10% of its workforce. While Lutke’s calendar purge may feel progressive (or most likely a drive for performance and efficiency), “meetings” aren't the problem, bad meetings are. Great meetings can be rituals that not only help get the work done, but are also meaningful to people and essential to building trust and connection.
Promises made here reinforce why people come together in the culture, and the expected commitment for folks to participate. Reinforcing key rituals in the culture is especially important for hybrid workforces who don’t have the opportunity to connect on a regular basis. Rituals demonstrate the time, energy and money that a company is willing to invest to bring their people closer together.
4. How we make decisions and create autonomy
Loss of control is addressed by empowering people through responsibility and decision making. Often the way decisions are made is not explicitly clear in a culture and people revert to the comfort of hierarchy. 86% of employees feel people at their workplace aren’t heard fairly or equally, and 47% of employees say that voices of underrepresented people in their workplace aren’t being represented.
Involving people in decision making means giving them a voice on the issues that impact them. Making promises around how decisions are made reinforces trust through clarity of power in the business and assurance that everyone’s voice will be listened to.
Here’s some help to get started
Promises for a connected culture are part of redefining your employee experience. You can read about how our partnership worked on ours, and see an example of what promises look like in this peek into our journey.
Your promises are the first step. Living up to them is the real work of creating a strategy that uses culture for growth. We’re currently shaping EX strategies for Stok, Amy’s Kitchen and Corinthia Hotels. Get in touch to find out how we can help you too.
Learn more about how we help you design an equitable employee experience.