Building Trust within your Organisation – How to get from brief to invoice in 6 working days!

Published 28/11/2019
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Concept Personnel is a recruitment agency specialising in the Creative, Marketing and Digital sector. We’re 18 years’ established and we place permanent and freelance candidates in our niche sector.
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Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about trust in the workplace and the importance of trust not only within your teams and in leadership but also with your customers. In recruitment trust is king and it’s at the heart of what we do. When your client trusts you to get the job done, there is absolutely no reason for them to look anywhere else or to brief any other supplier. They can spend their time getting their own job done whilst they trust you to fill their vacancies with as little input from them as possible.

Trust within your team and in your manager / leader means everyone in the business can concentrate on doing their best in their own roles without worry or concern about how any other part of the business will hold up against their own efforts.

Trust is how I recently got a new client from brief to placement in 6 working days which is quite rare in recruitment. The whole process on average usually takes between 2 and 3 months. This was the 3rd placement for a new client in Milton Keynes where I spent the first 2 placements making sure I built so much trust, that they knew they could let me get on with it with extreme efficiency.

Here are a few top tips on how to build trust within your organisation and with your clients in order to improve all areas of business:

Listen hard. A good friend and mentor of mine says you have one mouth and two ears for a reason. Make sure you listen and ask open and appropriate questions to find out where the pain points are. Take appropriate notes so you have those to refer back to. Then at the end of the conversation, read back the notes so that the other person is reassured that you’ve listened and understood.

Communicate. Check in with your client or your colleagues. When the other person hasn’t heard from you, they’re going to assume that you’ve forgotten about them. So if you’re working on an open job or project, communicate from time to time so that the other person knows what you’re up to and when your next point of activity is going to happen. This level of reassurance is vital for building trust.

Use the right language. When you reassure your client / colleague that you’re dealing with it, then the client knows they are in safe hands with you. So reassure them with phrases like ‘I’m on it. I’ve got it. I’ll get that done straight away. This is my number 1 priority. I’ll deal with that immediately.’ And mean it.

Always go the extra mile. Put yourself into the head of the other person and look at the project / process from their perspective and always go the extra mile to make their life as easy as possible. Doing things like adding a diary entry, attaching the appropriate document to save them looking it up again, colour coding the spreadsheet, simplifying the process in whichever way possible. If you do the little extras, then trusting you to do the bigger parts is a no-brainer.

Keep to your commitments. Make your promises and make sure you always keep your commitments. Even if it means working extra hours. Communicate what you will achieve and when, and then make sure you do it. If you don’t, the trust will dissipate very quickly.

Admit when you’ve made a mistake. Remember nobody is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. When it comes to building trust, it’s how you handle your mistakes that makes all the difference. So be ready to admit when you’re wrong and be prepared to advise the client or colleague to go against your original suggestion. You’re always remembered for the one thing that went wrong rather than the 12 things you did right. But you can turn this to your advantage if you are prepared to admit your mistake and then go the extra mile to correct yourself. If you do this you can turn your mistakes into the best way to build trust with your colleague or client.

Stephen Covey author of my favourite book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says, “Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” And what is business if it’s not relationships! Trust is at the very heart of business and I think it’s something we should all pay close attention to.
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About The Author

We’re the leading creative and digital recruitment agency in Newcastle and the wider North East region and we also have offices in Edinburgh and Milton Keynes.

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