Open and honest communication helps to build trust. After so many scandals over the last ten or so years, many in the business or investing world will approach your company for the first time with a high level of skepticism. But there are ways to begin to build and develop trust through communication.

Jodi Macpherson, a communications expert at Mercer Inc., says “Communication is fundamental to building trust…It contributes to the creation of an environment of trust around leaders that enables them to lead effectively, engage employees and ultimately deliver results.”

How Important is it to Your Business to Communicate Openly and Often

Your communications need to be worthy of trust to build trust. That seems like a simple statement, but you cannot break trust with your leaders and investors in your communications and expect communication to build trust. As the leader in your firm, you need to practice and enhance your communication skills and give other leaders an opportunity to do so as well. Leaders communicate.

Without communication within your organization, your employees will begin to feel you are hiding something from them. If you are communicating with them, they become more productive, better able to contribute possible changes to make things run even better, and they will feel happier in their job. Happy employees mean the costs of training new employees will drop, and production will remain higher.

Frequent and open communication with your employees, investors, and customers does not just provide information. It also opens up opportunities for those employees, investors, and customers to have a say in things and encourages discussions. This is accomplished by visits to your people in their environment, emails, training meetings and forum discussions. Do not send out a missive every week and expect it to do the trick. Use all the tools available to you in an effective way.

You may consider a mentoring program to match up your more experienced employees with newer ones so the newbies have someone to get help and advice from. And don’t forget the more experienced employees should be offered ways to up their game as well, making sure they do not feel that giving their experience to others is just to get rid of higher paid employees. If your program offers everyone a growth opportunity, you will be communicating an added level of trust to everyone as well as an understanding that each member of the company is vital and valued.

In addition, allowing for information communication between individuals and departments can be a boost. In smaller organizations you could provide juice, donuts, and bagels one morning a week to allow some easy interaction between people. Make sure as the leader of the company that you are there for at least a few minutes of time when several people are expected to be there. Check in with them, ask some questions that have nothing to do with work and the odd question about maybe something they would change at the office.

Honest communication within your company is vital and allows opportunities for growth that will last. When employees, customers, and investors know they can trust you, they will stick with you.