We often tell kids honesty is the best policy. The truth of the matter is that philosophy holds true for employees too, especially when it comes to the workplace. Openness and honesty at work all stats with hiring and retaining the right people. But how can leaders ensure their hiring practices encourage honesty at work?………for the modern enterprise, honesty is a broader concept than the simple expectation that everyone should tell the truth. Honesty is a cultural paradigm that includes trust, integrity, ethics, and so much more.
During times of uncertainty and crisis, encouraging honesty at work all starts with getting the right people in your company. How do you tell when job candidates are being honest and authentic? That’s a challenge but when you add in the complicated nature of hiring while interviewing remotely, it can seem nearly impossible.
Mr. Shailesh Rajpal said, “Honest at work is about trust, not rules, but some organizations try to grind honesty into the company culture through granular policies that dictate – in the letter-of-the-law fashion – what employees can or can’t do. Organizations must have clearly defined policies that helps set clear expectations as sometimes it can inadvertently send the wrong message every time you police your employees, you’re effectively saying to people, “we don’t trust you””.
When distrust is present, you may be encouraging employees to do only what is absolutely necessary, promoting further micromanagement that only reinforces a lack of trust and inhabits going above and beyond expectations. Plus, today’s high rate of employee turnover is also putting a significant amount of pressure on employees to restore a sense of trust that flows fairly between them and their workforce.
In order to establish honesty at work, Mr. Rajpal puts tremendous value on “acting with integrity” –one of his original core values. It might sound simple but it’s an approach that really covers the spirit of trust for each individual and throughput the workplace as a whole. That’s the key to building a system that emphasizes honesty at workplace.
