Building employee trust in Performance Management

The case of a mining company in Zimbabwe

An important precondition for a successful implementation of a performance management system is to involve employees in the development and implementation of the new system. In order to obtain employees’ participation, management has to first gain their trust because building trust in the workplace is crucial to successful change and organizational performance. In this article, a trust-building cycle is proposed which helps organizations build or rebuild the needed trust when implementing performance management. This trust-building cycle is successfully applied during the implementation of the balanced scorecard at a mining company in Zimbabwe.