The World Economic Forum would like us to believe that a new trust economy is coming as a result of COVID. The reality is that trust and the trust economy has been critical to and integrally involved with the success of top notch leaders and businesses for years. I believe COVID and remote work options are just changing the way trust works at work. Remote work can highlight both the strengths, and the weaknesses, of businesses. Good companies and leaders have already been using trust to find and retain the best employees which helps them build their businesses and backlog. If our people don't already trust us and we don't trust them, it is unlikely that clients, subs and vendors will trust our companies to build great projects. If trust didn't exist in normal work times, it is unlikely that it will suddenly appear in remote work environments. Remote work simply shines a light on good and bad trust economy practices. Strains and changes to businesses like COVID and remote work can lead to issues but often they just highlight a problem that already existed.
Most issues that construction company leaders and staff are having with teams in remote work environments were likely issues before COVID changed work dynamics. The scary part is that they may have been issues but no one knew it. The inability to connect with people as personally means that technical skill, meeting deadlines and producing deliverables become the main or only criteria for judging employee performance. We all know at least one person who has had substantial success in spite of their true performance but because of interpersonal skill and ability to quickly develop relationships. In remote work environments, interpersonal relationships, charisma and other soft skills matter less because they are used less or impossible to use at all. In a weird twist, lack of personal interaction might actually get employees to produce higher quality deliverables. Because reliance on in person explanations and demonstrations is not possible in remote work environments, more robust and error free deliverables where all t's are crossed, i's are dotted and all Q's get their tails are critical. Simply put, the deliverable must be complete and self explanatory. In the current remote work environment, trust is built and maintained more on performance than how well people get along with each other.
For the foreseeable future, less time will be spent building relationships with more being spent on building a quality deliverable. Time will tell how this swing away from personal interaction to deliverable based trust is an overall benefit to our industry.
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