By Mike Mwamuye
Trust, that veritable mother’s milk sustaining the lifeblood of relationships, is what ensures people cultivate mutually beneficial partnerships and genuine cooperation.
Trust is a value so rare in our world today. Even in the absence of data, anecdotal evidence suggests as much. It is so much because humans cannot be left to their own devices that rules and regulations exist in an orderly society and human resource policies and procedures are designed to manage human behavior within the workplace.
But even so, cases of deviant workplace behavior at managerial and subordinate levels exist. Consider, for instance, a manager consistently showing favoritism in task assignments, breeding resentment and distrust. With the Constitution of Kenya 2010 being a progressive document, it has become common for employment issues to find their way to the Employment and Labour Relations Court (ELRC) for legal redress.
Whereas I am not trying to throw cold water at the litigiousness of employees, the cases that find their way to the ELRC suggest a breach of trust of the legal contract and psychological contract—those unwritten expectations of fair treatment and mutual respect—entered between an employer and an employee.
These developments are taking us full circle to when human resource management was in its nascent stages and mostly centered on compliance issues. This is worrisome, especially now that the world is staring at volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), and strategic thinking around HRM should be the bulwark of its practice. In this dynamic environment, fostering trust through transparent communication and ethical leadership becomes paramount for navigating challenges effectively.
All in all, virtues and vices remain constant, and rules and regulations cannot contain but only help address morality. This should be a clarion call to managers and employees to build and sustain trust—perhaps through consistent actions and fostering psychological safety—in order to minimize legal risk and enable strategic thinking on people and culture.
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