It’s understandable it may be difficult to build trust when you’re working remotely — after all, perhaps you’ve never actually met your teammates in person, or rarely have a chance to interact with them apart via video calls and messages.
But, it’s quite possible to build trust in remote teams — if you follow the right advice on how to create a trustworthy working environment to begin with.
We contacted experts in managing remote teams to get this advice for you — in the form of 7 useful tips.
So, keep reading to find out more about:
- How experts define trust in a workplace,
- Why it’s important to build trust in a remote team, and
- The best tips and tools to increase trust in remote work environments.
What does trust in a workplace mean?
Generally, trust in the workplace relies on the belief that your colleagues stay true to their word, perform their job responsibly, and treat you with respect.
Still, there are some different interpretations of the key points important for the concept.
For Phoebe Gavin, Career and Leadership Coach, the key to trust is being reliable and respectful:
“Workplace trust is essentially a function of reliability and respect. Trusting your colleagues is believing they’ll do their jobs well, keep any commitments they make to you, and treat you and your ideas with respect.”
Founder & CEO of EducateMe, Roman Shauk believes confidence in the integrity and competence of others is another crucial trust factor:
“Trust in a workplace is the confidence employees have in the reliability, integrity, and competence of others. It is the belief that others are committed to the team’s objectives and can be relied upon to work in the best interests of the collective. It is even more imperative to have trust in a remote workplace because the physical distance can make it easy to have misunderstandings, miscommunications, and to feel generally isolated.”
That said, for Dr Mary Barnes, the CEO of Evolve Your Performance, trust only exists when it’s mutual:
“Trust in a remote workplace is a reciprocal belief system in which leadership is confident that employees will perform their roles with integrity, reliability, and openness, and employees believe that management will support their success and lead with integrity. This mutual trust is foundational, facilitating smoother communication and enhancing collaboration.”
Speaking of reciprocity, the CEO of Catalyst Leadership Management, Cheryl L. Mason, looks at trust from both employee and leader perspectives. She believes that the common aspect of trust is that you have to work for it:
“Trust in the workplace is generally defined from the employee perspective. To employees, trust means that leaders listen and hear them, that the leader supports and values them and their work through tools from technology to downtime, and that the leader champions them. There is another aspect of trust in the workplace and that is the leader’s perspective. To leaders, trust means loyalty. Regardless of the perspective, trust must be earned.”
Why is it important to build trust in a remote team?
According to research from Jain University, lack of trust among teams can lead to:
- Ineffectiveness and loss of productivity,
- Lack of employee interest and engagement,
- Absenteeism, and
- Attrition.
With the lack of in-person contact and supervision, building trust in remote teams becomes even more important. Gavin explains remote teams rely on trust to function properly:
“Trust in a remote workplace is truly essential, even though it is harder to build. You need even more trust that your colleagues are going to be reliable – that they’ll do their jobs and make good on their commitments to you. You need even more trust that they respect you because remote communication and collaboration mediums leave lots of room for misinterpretation of tone.”
Shauk highlights better collaboration and communication as key benefits to increasing trust:
“The primary reason trust is critical in a remote workplace is that it is the cornerstone for good collaboration and communication. Because of the lack of face-to-face interactions, remote teams rely on trust to ensure work gets done in a reliable manner and that team members feel supported. Trust begets a sense of psychological safety that enables people to share ideas, take risks, and engage in constructive conflict — all of which are critical to innovation and productivity.”
For Barnes, working on trust in remote settings increases productivity and morale:
“A lack of trust is one of the biggest reasons remote work seems to be challenging for organizations. In remote environments, where direct oversight is limited and social cues are reduced, mutual trust becomes the linchpin that ensures operational continuity and team cohesion. It’s crucial for maintaining morale and productivity when traditional office dynamics are absent.”
Furthermore, a long-time marketing manager and consultant, Elliott Brown, warns that the lack of trust can lead to reduced employee engagement:
“If you’re not careful, the remote workplace can become very transactional. When that happens, it means teams aren’t working together toward the same objective — they’re merely completing individual objectives in tandem. Once you lose that sense of common purpose, it’s easy to lose the engagement of each team member.”
How to build trust in remote team: 7 best tips
As our experts highlighted, trust is a crucial component of functional and effective collaboration and connectivity within remote teams.
Understanding the importance of building trust, they came up with concrete tips that could help team leaders create a more trusting remote work environment.
Tip #1: Maintain proper communication
For Shauk, maintaining regular communication is a must for building trust:
“To build trust in remote teams, one must focus on transparent and frequent communication. Making regular check-ins and video calls can help in making personal connections and ensure everyone is on the same page about the team’s goals and progress.”
CEO of Local SEO Help, Lonnie Jones, believes creating an environment that fosters open and frequent communication brings trust:
“I personally believe the best way to build trust in remote teams is to keep communication lines open, don’t micromanage, and keep people updated on task progress ahead of them having to chase you up.”
Moreover, Mason advises creating an environment that welcomes asking questions and raising issues:
“The best way to build trust in remote teams is communication between team members, including leaders. [It’s important to set] the expectations that it is OK or even expected to reach out and ask questions, discuss issues, and bring problems forward. Teamwork should be the same whether [it’s] in-person or remote — always with faces present. This means turning on the cameras and participating.”
Organizing meetings regularly helps you stay in touch with your team and maintain proper communication. Quality of the meetings is essential, which is why you should always make sure your meetings are effective and aren’t time-consuming. Moreover, engage in active listening and take notes on essential topics your team covered so your team feels heard.
Tip #2: Make sure everyone understands their roles
Being clear about everybody’s roles and responsibilities helps build trust and makes the working environment healthier in general. Chief HR Officer at NORC, University of Chicago, Tenia Davis, explains that a key factor in building trust are clearly defined responsibilities:
“Define roles, responsibilities, and goals clearly to avoid misunderstandings. Provide detailed guidelines on project deadlines, work hours, and performance metrics. This clarity helps employees understand what is expected and reduces anxiety about their performance.”
Tip #3: Work on employee recognition
According to our experts, employee recognition not only increases trust within the team but also boosts motivation. Barnes thinks every team milestone should be celebrated:
“Actively recognize contributions and celebrate milestones, big and small. Ensure everyone feels valued and included, reinforcing their trust in the team and organization.
In addition, Shauk believes employee recognition should be public:
“Recognize and celebrate progress and achievements. Publicly recognizing the hard work and successes of team members can boost morale and get the message across that everyone’s contributions are valued.”
You can create a culture of recognition in various ways. Some ideas you can try out are:
- Organizing employee of the month,
- Creating a reward system,
- Scheduling 1-1 meetings to congratulate employees on their hard work, and
- Acknowledging your team publicly in the company’s chat app.
Tip #4: Invest in quality management
Managers represent a company and its values. A good manager creates a safe environment for all employees, which boosts employee morale and trust.
Gavin highlights that good managers know how to manage a remote team and create a respectful, reliable environment:
“The biggest tip for building trust in remote teams is investing in your middle managers. They are the stewards of your culture, and if they’re not good leaders, it’s going to be difficult for you to have high-functioning, reliable, respectful teams. Good managers know how to nurture this, while underskilled managers might ignore it or even sabotage it.”
You can find great courses that can help your managers work on both their technical and soft skills such as:
- Emotional intelligence,
- Conflict resolution,
- Effective communication,
- Crafting constructive feedback, and
- Adaptability and resilience.
In addition, you can organize regular meetings with managers to ensure they understand their role in building trust and accountability.
Further reading
A leader is not the same as a manager. Read about the key differences here:
Tip #5: Improve onboarding
A good onboarding process ensures your new hires aren’t overwhelmed with the amount of work — but also the number of employees they come in contact with, which helps build trusting relationships early on.
Gavin notes how intimidating joining a new company can be to new employees:
“People can be overwhelmed by the number of colleagues, or intimidated or insecure about who they should connect with. They might hesitate to build those new relationships because they’re too nervous about what to talk about. All of that prevents them from establishing those initial foundational working relationships, which is essential to trust.”
To mitigate this issue, Gavin advises involving more people in the onboarding process and introducing employees to a new worker to ensure new hires can communicate with everyone more naturally:
“When someone new enters the organization, it’s important to make sure they are getting to know the people they work with as quickly and as deeply as possible. A strong onboarding process will give people a clear list of folks to talk to and what to talk about, and actively encourage them, and, in some cases, even hold them accountable for having those conversations.”
In addition, to ease the collaboration within the team from the get-go, the Head of Growth Marketing at TASK Group, Mark Hayes, proposes mentorships and buddy systems:
“Mentorships or a buddy system can help strengthen individuals’ feelings of connection to the group. We find this is especially helpful for the newest members of our remote teams.”
Human Resources Generalist at CAKE.com, Aleksandra Babic, further explains the importance of having the Work Buddy program as part of their Social onboarding.
The Work Buddy program pairs a new hire and an employee who’s been with the company for a while and is integrated into the working environment. She notes that the informal nature of the Work Buddy 1-1 meetings helps new employees adapt and integrate into their new working environment more easily:
“As a company that still operates remotely, it’s important to help new hires integrate with the company culture. We make sure that work buddies have similar nature, interests, ages, and work experiences, so the conversation can flow more naturally and they can become comfortable with each other quickly.”
Tip #6: Offer regular feedback
Feedback is a great way to improve and celebrate your employees’ work. But, when building trust is a priority, you need to ensure that feedback is supportive and constructive.
Davis recommends using constructive feedback to guide employee performance:
“Regularly provide feedback that is constructive and balanced. Use one-on-one meetings to discuss performance and offer guidance for improvement. Feedback should be specific, actionable, and delivered in a supportive manner.”
Barnes adds that feedback should always be personalized:
“Provide regular and constructive feedback in a personalized manner, showing your investment in their professional growth and personal well-being.”
Above all, Shauk believes regular feedback brings accountability:
“When the members of the team know what to expect and receive standardized, positive feedback, they can have faith in the fairness and accountability of the workspace.”
Tip #7: Organize remote team-building activities
Team-building activities increase trust by enabling your team to bond in a more relaxed environment. And, though it may seem challenging, Davis thinks leaders should find different types of team-building activities for their teams, even when working remotely:
“Create opportunities for remote team members to interact and build relationships beyond work tasks. Virtual team-building activities, online social events, and informal chat channels can help foster camaraderie and trust.”
Chief People and Culture Strategist at Pivot One-Eighty, Catherine L. Wheeler, highlights that team-building activities might not be welcomed by everyone at first. Still, these activities have great benefits in the long run:
“The truth is, a lot of teams loathe the required online team-building session until they have fun! While team-building can be daunting to plan and initially annoying for people to participate — there is no replacement for the value of understanding team members beyond the work they do. Rotating the responsibility of planning an activity within a team is a sure way for team members to feel intrinsically trusted while introducing new ways for the team to connect.”
President & COO of Hennessey Digital, Scott Shrum, prefers bonding experiences that aren’t too time-consuming. For instance, his company incentivizes good relationships between colleagues with 15-minute online coffee breaks:
“Last year, we introduced coffee breaks, where two or three team members are randomly matched up for a 15-minute coffee break. We have found this has helped a great deal in forging more connections between departments and between layers of the organization chart.”
Build trust in your remote team with our expert tips
Creating a trustworthy work environment can be challenging, especially among remote teams where you can’t count on in-person connections. But, according to our experts, a trusting environment is essential for:
- Good relationships between employees,
- Effective communication and collaboration,
- Increased productivity, and
- Higher employee engagement.
On that note, our experts came up with key tips that will help build a trusting working environment:
- Maintaining proper communication,
- Ensuring clarity about roles and responsibilities,
- Recognizing employees’ hard work,
- Improving onboarding, and
- Organizing team-building activities.
Moreover, as Gavin noted, managers are the “stewards of your culture”, so investing in their competencies will surely prove useful for building trust in the long run. With the expert tips from this article, the process of building trust will be much easier. So test out some or all of the tips and enjoy a more trustworthy workplace — across all time zones and continents.