Building Trust In The Workplace

I'm all for outsourcing when it makes sense for a business leader. In fact, this week I retweeted Adam Toren's suggestion that busy executives can save time by outsourcing some of their more tedious household responsibilities.

But I think that if employee engagement or the workplace culture could suffer, then don't do it. Building trust in the workplace, IMO, should always be the top item on any CEO's to-do list.

So therefore I can't endorse Douglas R. Palmer's pitch on the Small Business CEO blog to outsource your finance department. I have two thoughts here as to why (in addition to the line in the sand I laid out above):

First, while Palmer's list of the pros of doing this does make business sense, one associated risk is the loss or accidental distribution of sensitive information. Even if you've thoroughly researched your options and chosen a winning partner, that can still happen. Would you take that chance with your company's balance sheet and salary info?
Second and more importantly from a productivity standpoint, keeping this function in-house is one more piece of the intellectual capital pie that can benefit from leadership, if not team, involvement. One of the themes of our Top Small Workplaces over the years has been their ability to anticipate marketplace changes, which especially helps them navigate tough times like these, in large part because their leaders engage employees by sharing financial information with them and teach them what it means, which spurs actionable ideas on creating efficiencies and optimizing revenue sources. If they outsourced their financial component, this outcome would be difficult if not impossible to achieve.

Where do you stand here?