Does your employer distrust you? It’s time to quit

Ever sat in a brainstorming meeting at your workplace? Perhaps organisers piled mounds of post-it-notes and pens on the table and plastered the walls with poster boards.

Employees likely rushed around to each poster board’s specific theme affixing notes with various solutions, innovations, and ideas.

Following the outburst of creative energy, employees then stood by their ideas and explained thoughts in more detail through impromptu presentations.

Regular brainstorming sessions with true pan-organisation representation often serve as a highlight of one’s work calendar. The goal, of course, for such gatherings does not simply encompass the art of sharing, but rather the science of implementing the best ideas that push the entity forward.

So, you notice in the weeks and months following the brainstorm, that nearly all the other ideas get implemented except yours.

What could possibly be going on? Therefore, what was the point of including you in the workshops in the first place?

Necessary evil

The reason is simple, direct, and disturbing. Your employer does not trust you. Perhaps your boss finds your handling of mundane work tasks acceptable, but does not trust you to do anything deeper, more meaningful, or impactful to the firm.

Your skills represent a necessary evil that he or she must tolerate for regular work functioning, but nothing more.

Researchers call the above concept “felt trust”. Not only does the lack of supervisor trust in their employee or employees hinder the worker’s career advancement, but also when one does not feel trusted by their manager, it also hinders their ability to express, implement, and plan in their job.

The subsequent diminished capacity then causes the boss to further distrust his or her employee and the cycle deepens getting worse and worse over time.

Inasmuch, should an employee remain employed in such a toxic work environment? Clearly not.

Business Talk continues its Business Daily series today on whether you should quit your current job.

Researchers Holly Brower, Scott Lester, Audrey Korsgaard, and Brian Dineen hold that not only does the amount of trust that an employee feels for his or her boss provide important clues into workplace performance, but also the amount of trust that the employee feels that their managers holds in them stands as extremely critical to organisational success.

Felt trust causes workers to perform better, do extra work without requiring extra pay, and quit their workplaces less frequently. Felt trust helps employees as well as managers. Researcher Kristin Straiter highlights that when bosses trust their employees, the bosses themselves enjoy their own work more through higher job satisfaction.

So gauge the level autonomy at your workplace. Ask yourself the following six statements that represent different levels of trust that you feel with your current workplace in each category by judging the frequency of its occurrence.

Take each declaration and judge it in your mind on the following 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 point scale whereby each number represents your following opinion of your workplace as: Never (1), Occasionally (2), Sometimes (3), Often (4), Always (5).

Write your numeric answer for each of the following six proclamations: My supervisor does not require that I get his or her input or approval before making decisions. My supervisor lets me make decisions by myself, without consulting with him or her.

My supervisor gives me the authority to make my own decisions, without any input from him or her.

I ask my supervisor for information for information and then make job-related decision for myself. My supervisor gives me areas where I decide on my own, after first getting information from him or her. My supervisor permits me to get needed information from him or her and then make my own decisions.

Now add up the numbers for your answers. Take your total and divide it by six (6) to give you your average response. If you scored a 3.5 or higher, then you enjoy a good job fit with comfortable levels of trust experienced from your boss.

If your average result resulted between a 2.0 and 3.5, start examining different options in the medium term.

Personal growth

If you unfortunately rated your felt trust on average as below 2.0, then you should kick-off an immediate search for a new job for the sake of your personal growth, sanity, and income continuity protection.

Everyone deserves to work in an environment where they feel valued, trusted, and utilised. Do not just tolerate your work conditions, but rather thrive in an enabling workplace.

Strive to find alternative work situations and frequently gauge whether your manager trusts you or not.

The effects lead to mammoth consequences for your life.

The Business Daily next Thursday continues assessing more variables in Business Talk to ascertain whether you should quit or stay with your job by digging deeper into one’s self-esteem and life satisfaction. Does your current job help or hurt?

Share your own job quitting or staying stories with other Business Daily readers through #KenyaTurnover on Twitter.

Prof Scott may be reached on [email protected] or follow on Twitter: @ScottProfessor.