Hope Hailey, who is dean of the School of Management at Bath University and a regular on HR magazine’s Most Influential HR UK Thinkers list, said her recent research had found that developing trustworthy leaders often relied on using gut feel and this created “problems for HR”.
Speaking at the CIPD’s Learning and Development Show in London yesterday, Hope Hailey said: “Too many HR processes may close down the intuitive judgement of a manager’s potential for integrity and benevolence [two of the drivers of trust]. How do you measure those softer, relational areas? That’s something for HR to think about for the future.”
She added that having too many HR processes and policies in place also implied HR doesn't trust managers to make the right judgements in areas like recruiting.
Hope Hailey was speaking about her most recent report into trust in organisations, Cultivating Trustworthy Leaders, which explores several ways HR departments can help to build trust in leaders. These include using values-based selection techniques during the recruitment process and giving feedback through tools like 360-degree practices.
Also speaking at the session was Geoff McDonald, global VP of HR, marketing, communications, sustainability and water at Unilever. He said that the transparency that comes with social media means that creating trust in organisations and leaders is of critical importance.
“With social media comes total transparency, you can’t hide anything anymore,” he said. “People don’t expect perfection, but they expect honesty.”