Telling Employees the Truth About COVID-19 Builds Trust

We are living today in a future Harvard business school case study regarding what to tell employees and what to hold back. An unprecedented opportunity for truth-telling or trust-breaking…about life and death. These recent headlines hint at our management complexities:

• Grocery Workers Are Beginning to Die of Coronavirus
• Deaths Expose Fears for Strength of U.S. Food-Supply Chain
• Nursing home with 39 Coronavirus Cases Evacuated After Staff Stops Showing Up

There is another side to this never-been-faced-before dilemma, laid out in an article with this headline:

• CEOs Grapple with the Toughest Calls of Their Careers

Even heartful CEOs can’t predict when business will “re-open”, and are counting every dollar regarding obligations to shareholders, customers, and employees. Clearly, no one is purposely making decisions that hurt their teams.

We know of companies doing amazing things for their employees, too, like reducing executive pay or cutting back on schedules, all so everyone continues to get a paycheck.

Perhaps the most important missing word in all of these articles is TRUST. This brings to mind the long-researched finding that the number one reason employees stay or leave…or engage or disengage…is how much they trust their boss. “Boss” extends now to anyone with authority, anyone who is telling us how to perform our jobs regarding COVID-19.

Employees who are still coming to work are rightly fearful and are listening to management’s every word as though it is coming through a megaphone. Today is the day to communicate truths as we know them, both frequently and compassionately.

Our employees have long memories…and what we tell them and how we treat them will resonate for many months beyond when we re-enter our society’s new normal. This is the time to make all employee decisions for both the short- and long-term.

Dick Finnegan is the CEO of C-Suite Analytics which helps client companies cut turnover by 30% and more. Contact us for help in building trust with your employees today at dfinnegan@c-suiteanalytics.com.