Bekkie Wetz
2 min read
Thursday May 1st was a very special day at Reward Gateway. It was the day of our first ever Reward Gateway employee wedding and I was lucky enough to attend. It was a glorious day in New York City with the sun shining on the beautiful, towering skyline, which became the romantic backdrop to the vows promised by bride and groom. This got me thinking about that prized quality in any relationship... Trust.
In fact, trust is important in many aspects of our lives: marriage, relationships, friendships, religions, family, politics and lots more. But let’s bring this back round to the workplace. We talk about engaged employees, happy employees, hard-working employees.
But what of trusting employees?
At Reward Gateway, there is a relaxed attitude towards working hours - as long as you are here when your clients need you and you get your job done then you are trusted to manage your own time.
The result?
We now have a very active sales team who take time out of their working day to go to the gym. Out of this a healthy culture has been born; now every single member of the US team is an active gym go-er. Not only are we all looking and feeling great, more active and healthier, but between us, in just a year, over 4 stone has been lost - all thanks to trust!
The Culture Team recently reviewed all of our employee policies. You might be thinking this sounds dull, well, you wouldn’t be wrong. That’s why the decision was made to shred them all up into small pieces and place them safely and firmly in the bin. Now, our expenses policy has transformed from a 17 page document of ‘dos’ and ‘don'ts’ to this: ‘Think of the business and only spend what you would spend yourself’.
If you tell an employee the lunch budget is $15 I guarantee you will get many expense receipts through for $14.99 but trust employees to spend what they think is suitable and this is likely to be lower.
Is there a place for trust in the workplace? Is it important? My answer, from my personal experience, is yes - absolutely. When you trust your employees you give them room to breathe, you give them flexibility and freedom - this in turn, helps to create happy, engaged employees.
Our mission is that we want to make the world a better place to work. And much like anything else that starts at home, this starts with Reward Gateway and with trusting our employees.
So I would like to finish by saying, do you, the reader, take thee, your employees to be people you trust? Think about it... the results could be huge.