Trust and Doing the Right Thing

After you pay for your items at Sam’s Club – and many Walmart stores – you have to show your receipt to a store employee in order to leave the building. It kind of feels like needing approval to get out of prison.

Is it because they don’t trust you? On the contrary, management doesn’t trust their employees. As I’ve been told on a number of occasions, Walmart/Sam’s Club management believes front-line employees are allowing their friends to leave with merchandise without paying for it.

What message does this policing policy send to all employees? Is it any wonder that Walmart has experienced labor issues and employee lawsuits?

I also find it interesting that a common definition of integrity (or ethics), across Fortune 500 companies, is: “Do the right thing.”  Walmart is one of those companies that list Integrity as a core value.

Really?

Then there are companies like Netflix with no official hours for their employees; everyone can come and go as they please. All that’s required is the work gets done in a timely fashion. (Of course, abusing this policy means looking for a new job.)

This new breed of business understands the power of trust and how to turn it into an asset.

If companies are struggling with labor or ethical issues, they need to examine the level of trust between management and employees, and how they promote the value of integrity.

When employees are encouraged to do the right thing AND are shown they can be trusted, most people will do the right thing, most of the time.

Better yet, they might become your biggest fans – which is priceless!