By Kiara Miller
Do you think transparency is a much-talked-about idea in the workplace? Rather, it is correct to say that transparency is an underrepresented idea in the corporate world. There is always a deficit between employees’ expectations of transparency and organizations’ response to the same.
However, the fact of the matter is that transparency can offer some unparalleled business benefits to an organization. As a leader or a business owner, it is essential for you to acknowledge these unexplored advantages. For acknowledging them, you first need to know about them, right?
Having said that, this blog highlights some exceptional benefits of promoting greater transparency in the workplace. On the other side of the blog, you may want to look at the idea of transparency from a completely new perspective. So, let us get started without further ado.
5 ways workplace transparency adds to business success
1- Cultivation of high trust
When you promote greater transparency in the workplace as a leader, you lay a strong foundation of high trust in the workplace. In fact, workplace transparency is a direct measure of how much trust the top management shows in their employees.
If you look at it from the perspective of your employees, trust is one of the greatest motivators for them. When employers trust their employees, employees feel valued and a greater sense of belonging is fostered. For them, every ounce of trust you invest in them empowers them in an incredible manner.
To substantiate, as per Harvard Business Review, employees in high trust organizations exhibit 76 percent higher engagement. Did you know that highly engaged teams can help a business enhance its profitability by 21 percent? This interesting and vital insight from Forbes makes a strong case for you to work on excellent employee engagement strategies.
Furthermore, HBR further states that employees in high trust companies manifest 50 percent higher efficiency and 106 percent more enthusiasm to perform better. Clearly, you are missing out on incredible business benefits if you still don’t feel the need to foster trust in the workplace.
The bottom line is that cultivating high trust is easier said than done. It takes continuous efforts from the top management and leaders to promote enormous trust in their workforce. However, can trust and opaque communication or barriers to information co-exist in the workplace?
Forbes reveals that 50 percent of employees feel that their organizations are not transparent enough. When they feel this way, it certainly affects their engagement and commitment. The key is to create a more transparent workplace environment where employees have access to the latest updates and company information.
Of course, not all information is worth sharing with your employees. The idea of transparency has to be meticulous and balanced effectively.
2- Optimized change management
We can very well see around us how the corporate world is evolving at an unimaginable pace. In this competitive world, businesses have more challenges than ever to face. Also, it is essential for your business to incorporate the ever-evolving business trends in an effective manner to stay ahead of your competitors.
Simply put, your business has to be far more effective in terms of managing major organizational transformations. The more adaptable and agile your business is in response to the changing external business environment the greater the business success.
All in all, your business needs to integrate effective change management mechanisms to efficiently implement the prerequisite transitions.
However, whenever it comes to incorporating transitions in your organization, you will face resistance from your employees. If you ask your employees, most of them would say that they are comfortable with the status quo.
Having said that, a large proportion of them would be reluctant to align their interests with a proposed change. This will often hinder or derail the change management process in your organization and may put your business at risk.
Transparency can be a simple answer to the complex problems of change management. When the process is more transparent, you can inspire your employees to proactively participate in the change. For that, you need to share the necessary information with them that is linked to the change.
To explain, if there is transparency around the purpose, vision, values, and the visualization of success linked to the change, things will be clearer. Employees will have a better understanding of the change and the need for it. Hence, they can overcome their resistance to align their objectives with the change. This is where transparency will certainly be beneficial for your organization.
3- Systematic knowledge sharing
Transparency also facilitates better knowledge sharing in the workplace. This knowledge sharing is essential for the effective learning and development of your young employees. Every organization expects its employees to learn effectively and upskill themselves in a consistent way.
However, do you expect that to happen without proper knowledge sharing between superiors and the young employees? For creating a high-performance culture, you need to create effective mechanisms for knowledge sharing, feedback sharing, and continuous learning in the workplace.
In fact, in a work environment where knowledge sharing thrives, working relationships and collaboration will also thrive. This will further improve workplace collaboration and hence add greater value to the organization’s success. To validate, as per SalesForce, 86 percent of executives opine that ineffective collaboration is the key reason behind project failure.
As you can see, collaboration has a direct correlation with the success of your organization. For effective collaboration between cross-functional teams or employees at different designations, transparency and open communication are necessary. Makes great sense, right?
4- Greater optimism in the workplace
When organizations share adequate information with their employees, employees feel motivated. You will see greater optimism in your workforce when you encourage greater transparency in the workplace. This optimism in your employees can further make way for incredible innovation that could add immensely to the USPs of your business.
Also, when employees are more positive, they are less vulnerable to burnout experiences. Besides, optimism will also drive them to invest additional effort in their individual tasks that are correlated with organizational priorities. With transparency, you can unlock new horizons of potential in your organization and advance your pursuit of success.
5- Enhanced customer experience
Employers being transparent in terms of information or knowledge sharing with their employees is one aspect of business transparency. It is equally essential and advantageous for companies to promote greater transparency in customer relationship management.
When you are honest with your customers, it means the world to them. Let us try to understand this with a simple example. Let us say you are an e-commerce company and for some reason, a few shipments are behind schedule.
If you are transparent and honest in sharing the actual reasons for the delay, they will understand and appreciate the same. However, if you go about making redundant excuses, that will for sure infuriate your customers. In simple terms, the greater the transparency and honesty in customer relations the higher the customer retention rates.
In fact, as per SupplyChainBrain, more than 94 percent of customers say that they will have a greater allegiance to businesses that maintain transparency in customer relationships. Otherwise, if you are not committed to delivering positive customer experiences, your businesses will be on the verge of high attrition leading to hefty business losses.
To substantiate, as per Review 42, more than 30 percent of customers will end their association with a brand even after a single instance of a negative customer experience. You certainly don’t want that to happen to your business, right? Having said that, with greater transparency and honesty, you can create deeper connections with your customers.
To recapitulate, transparency is a virtue that comes with a wide range of business benefits. With transparency, you can resolve complex challenges like employee disengagement and turnover. Furthermore, transparency also facilitates flourishing customer relationships that are salient to the success of any business. However, at the same time, transparency may also have some drawbacks. You need a cautious and balanced approach while promoting greater transparency in the workplace.
