How to Gain Trust From Your Overseas Employees

As a business leader/owner, it's important that you learn how to gain trust from employees as you build and grow your business. This is because trust is one of the most important elements of a thriving workforce.

If trust is not maintained, employees will quickly start questioning your decision-making and processes, gossip, and soon, disrespect will spread like wildfire, and you may even notice a hit to productivity and morale.

According to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer research, employees are increasingly placing more trust in their managers and place of employment. It's therefore no surprise that trust in the workplace is on the rise.

If you know that workplace trust is something you and your company need to work on and maintain a strong flow of it, then keep reading!

Importance of Trust for Employees

It's very important to Encourage trust in your organization; it is a vital culture for every company and also valuable to all workforce.

Harvard Business Review research into high-trust and low-trust companies found that “people at high-trust companies report: 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, [and] 40% less burnout.”

As you may well know; ‘Trust', they say, goes both ways.

The gradual shift to remote working has put most enterprises' ability to trust their employees under the spotlight.

Looking at the data on work-from-home productivity, the viability of choice-first workplaces and even the recent data from Iceland's four-day work week trial, remote workers are just as productive as those in the office! But also, in an increasingly employee-centric world, it's important to think about it the other way around, too.

The question now is, how can employers make employees trust them? 

You can agree with me that enterprises these days are increasingly looking to hire candidates abroad. With this current development, how can today's decision-makers encourage and support a high-trust relationship with their overseas employees?

Related Article: Best Way To Pay International Employees

How To Gain Trust From Employees as an Organization

Ensure that you have a single global workforce management platform that can make it easier for you and your company to encourage trust across the workforce.

This Global Employee System needs to be active before the candidate is even called for an interview, creating a clear process for hiring that is suitable and streamlined for any location.

With your company's Papaya Global HR Management Portal, make sure to create a uniform process for onboarding new workers, including uploading all necessary documentation to a single place, getting contracts signed and sealed, and managing anything from expenses to time and attendance.

As you move past the onboarding stage, you can create a global benefits package from your HR Management Portal so that all employees get the same perks; for instance, you can add extra days off for years of loyalty.

Again, Security is another big factor for trust.

I recommend using an Employer-of-Record solution for employees who you want to onboard abroad, giving them more security over their role than they could have as freelancers or independent contractors.

According to Forbes, freelancers can often feel unconnected to the rest of the company. By their very definition, you won't get the loyalty you expect from full-time employees by using a contractor model.

In contrast, when you use a local in-country partner who can compliantly hire your candidate abroad, your workers feel like they are part of the family.

Strengthen Your Organizational Communication

As you keep growing your business reputation and transparency in business, your employees, when onboarded, will need to feel they are part of a singular global culture and communication strategy.

This is true, even if they are working as a single employee in the region, they should be able to utilize the same internal systems and processes, be kept in the loop about the company vision and messaging, and have clear lines of communication to channel questions, feedback or criticism.

You need to consider utilizing a company intranet to help all employees speak to one another and communicate more often, or encourage “all hands” Zoom meetings.

At these meetings, the junior employees will get the chance to hear from senior leadership, and all workers are invited to hear about messaging vision or strategy.

Now, don't just stop at organizational communication; You need to look for ways to encourage employees to communicate better with one another, too.

When your employees all work in the same office, you could expect that they will naturally form friendships and bonds, and schedule out-of-work social activities.

Since COVID-19, and in a remote workforce this isn't the case. Many workers struggle to be communicative about what they need or even who they are. In fact, 1 in 4 employees says they need to hide parts of who they are in order to better fit in at work.

According to Google, managers who express interest and concern for team members outperform others both by the quantity of work and quality of work. Whether their team is in the cubicle next door or thousands of miles across the globe – encourage managers and colleagues to look for ways to engage.

Over the past two years, many organizations have gone through extreme changes.

High-trust organizations see loyalty and innovation from their employees even when the going gets tough. 21% of employees say they would work longer hours if they trusted their employers more, and 23% say they would put forward more creative ideas and innovative solutions.

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Increase Transparency in Business through Self-Service Tools

To establish trust in your organization, you need to provide a culture of openness on both sides. What that means is that your employees shouldn't have to jump through hoops to find access to information about their role, their benefits, or their payment schedules.

58% of employees are worried about their finances, and 38% say that they don't currently have more than $1,000 in the bank to deal with unexpected emergencies.

When the payroll manager isn't on the other side of the office to answer quick questions; it will be difficult to keep things flowing in the right direction.

As an employer, you need to know that both physical employees and remote employees need a feeling of security around where they're going to find the information they need. This could be about anything from late payments, when bonuses can be expected, to if vacation days are running out.

This is a very important reason why you need a platform like the Papaya Business Portal. It is an employee self-service portal that can help you keep things flowing smoothly in your organization.

From the Papaya Business Portal, employees can handle their time and attendance, request vacation days and time off, indicate their PTO to other employees, and access vital information on their benefits and payslips.

Your company can also use Papaya Global Portal to share updates and notifications with all employees – so they never feel out of the loop. It's a unique way of recognizing your employee's specific needs while enveloping them in the overarching culture of your organization.

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Maintain Your Credibility as an Employer

One very important thing you need to be aware of as a global employer is a fact that the choices you make as a leader in business, will impact employees in all of your locations.

With that being said; Focusing on a core group of employees in HQ and relying on disparate solutions to pick up the slack elsewhere could have a negative impact on the trust you're garnering from your company's workforce as a whole.

In contrast, you need to keep your messaging and communication culture consistent, your processes streamlined and holistic, and all information transparent, accurate, and easy to access allowing you to build a culture of openness and trust.

The result of doing this is that you'll see it for yourself, employee morale, productivity, retention, and loyalty.

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Frequently Asked Question

Summary

I believe you have learned how to gain employee trust from this article and with vital business tips and information here, you will build your organizational communication culture, grow your business reputation, and enhance your transparency in business.

Business reputation is vital both at home and abroad. You need to make sure you are using the right tools and partner services to keep your organization growing and more successful.

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