Each year we run our Aurizon People Insights Survey. Last year’s showed that our people were feeling less energised, lacked clarity as to how they linked to the business strategy, and that they felt they were not able to share opinions without fear of retaliation. As a leadership team, we created annual people plans to address the poor morale, low accountability, lack of clarity, and diminishing relationships.

Results are in for the initial stages. Last year we had 66%participation. This year was over 90%! This is already a great demonstration of improved psychological safety and people feeling their voice is valued and that it's safe to speak up.

It was also identified that our leaders needed support and development. Aurizon mandated 2-day workshops, followed by coaching pods over 8-12 weeks, for all frontline leaders. The workshops focus on building trust, enabling courageous conversations, adapting to different situations and personalities, and what not to say. The coaching pods require leaders to take those skills and apply them in real life environments. These have been pivotal in many of the challenging and uncomfortable conversations I have had during my time in leadership.

• Setting team rituals.
• 1:1 wellbeing framework to address team and personal growth.
• Reset BU expectations across teams to improve clarity and purpose.
• The importance of language.
• How to build healthy foundations in the team.
• Safe environments so that people can speak up, learn, and share.
• Framing conversations to enable curiosity, not finger pointing.
• Tools to identify how people are feeling.
• Collaborating with your team to address challenges and support them.
• How, why, and when to provide feedback.

High Trust leads to:

Higher levels of productivity – extending high trust to employees typically leads them to feel empowered make decisions and allowing them to work more effectively.  Decisions can be made quicker.

Enhanced Safety Culture – in a high trust environment employees feel safe raising concerns, admitting mistakes, providing full disclosure and transparency when things go wrong leading to better learning outcomes.

Higher employee engagement and retention – people in high trust environments tend to feel valued and respected for their contribution, regardless of their level/role within the organisation, leading to increased loyalty and commitment to company success.

Innovation and collaboration – in high trust environments people are not inclined to want to protect their patch or withhold ideas/information, ideas flow freely because it is not a competition within the organisation.  There are no hidden agendas.  

• What does a high trust working environment look like?
• What are the benefits of high trust to an organisation?
• What erodes trust in an organisation?
• Even though generally well-intended how do leaders influence levels of trust within an organisation?
• What is critical for high trust?