{"id":2877,"date":"2016-10-31T11:54:41","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T11:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.binfire.com\/blog\/?p=2877"},"modified":"2026-02-13T09:15:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:15:50","slug":"project-management-software-create-trust-team-members","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.binfire.com\/blog\/project-management-software-create-trust-team-members\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Project Management Software create trust?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Employee trust is not a commodity that can be purchased or traded.\u00a0\u00a0 No chief operating officer quantifies trust.\u00a0 There is no line item for employee trust on a corporate balance sheet.<\/span><\/p>\n

How important is employee trust?\u00a0 In a July 2016 Harvard Business Review article<\/a>, \u00a0Stephen Covey and Douglas Conant use hard data to demonstrate the economic value of trust.\u00a0\u00a0 Organizations with the highest levels of trust between managers and employees outperform the S&P\u2019s annual return by a factor of three.<\/span><\/p>\n

The authors explain that an improvement in trust correlates to a decrease in cost and an increase in speed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at trust from a project management perspective.\u00a0\u00a0 Today a typical project team includes at least one remote worker.\u00a0\u00a0 As detailed in the recently published Binfire Remote Worker\u2019s Survey<\/a>,\u00a0 approximately 25% do not know their teams well, and a further 25% are \u201cNeutral\u201d as to whether they know their teams.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the last decade, we have witnessed an explosive growth in the use of online project management software and collaboration tools.\u00a0\u00a0 These tools enable team members to brainstorm, collaborate on tasks and to share project management milestones.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, technology is not an enabler of trust.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trust is primarily generated as an outcome of positive behaviors between individuals.\u00a0\u00a0 Within a project team, there needs to be trust between team members and trust between each individual and the project manager.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are many external factors that impact deadlines and deliverables.\u00a0\u00a0 Based on my experience, building trust is a deliberate strategy and not merely a side effect or unintended consequence of good behavior.\u00a0\u00a0 To extrapolate from the HBR study above, a project team that trusts each other is more likely to deliver on time and within budget.<\/span><\/p>\n

How do we create and nurture trust?\u00a0\u00a0 First, we have to remember should never be taken for granted.\u00a0 Here are some common-sense guidelines to use when building a project management team:<\/span><\/p>\n