When you think transparency regarding your business, think trust. Transparency is the foundation for trust between a company and all its stakeholders, including investors, customers, vendors and supply chain members, and employees.
It can take various forms, but the core objective of transparency remains the same: establishing trust and goodwill through openness and honesty in business dealings and communication.
Transparency with your employees means honest, ongoing two-way communications. This includes conversations about business goals and objectives, company and employee performance, any changes on the horizon, and other work-related issues.
Of course, confidentiality is sometimes necessary. But letting your team members know what’s going on makes good business sense. It helps boost and maintain high morale, engagement and retention, and leverages productive feedback to improve processes and drive results. Last but not least, it demonstrates a high level of integrity and ethical behavior.
To dig more deeply into four reasons why transparency matters, consider that:
1. Transparency around salaries can protect you against lawsuits.
By staying transparent about salaries, there’s a greater obligation for company leaders, managers and your HR team to stay fair. Salary transparency can help prevent costly lawsuits on charges of pay discrimination.
2. When employees are in the loop, they can make better decisions.
Building a culture of open communication helps your employees feel more secure in their roles and builds their sense of ownership and engagement in your business. In other words, your business becomes their business – and their dedication and commitment to it grows as a result.
Even if you’ve hit some bumps in the road, transparency helps ensure that the truth is disseminated and that employees can ask the right questions. They’ll find out anyway, so make sure they hear it from you and not a potentially toxic grapevine.
3. Transparency helps combat fraud.
When it comes to fraud prevention, secrecy in the name of confidentiality can result in devastating losses in cash and/or investor lawsuits. When more than one person knows what’s happening, it becomes more difficult for anyone to commit fraud.
4. Transparency helps prevent data losses.
Data loss prevention (DLP) best practices include systems transparency. Of course, passwords and proper security are critical. But nothing should be so secret that only a few people are aware of it. For instance, if a business critical employee resigns suddenly due to a misunderstanding or disagreement, you need access to their data to keep it safe.
Communicate regularly with employees and other stakeholders about the state of and developments regarding your DLP program.
At PrideStaff Fresno, we work with company leaders to help them improve themselves and their businesses via the right talent management processes and strategies. We also match employers with the candidates they need – whether those needs are for temporary, temp-to-hire or direct recruitment employees – in areas including administration, customer service, IT, finance, legal support, healthcare, production and distribution. Contact us today to learn more.