The problem
Senior executives don’t trust the C-suite, middle managers
don’t trust their bosses, and no one seems to trust entry-level
workers. What’s going on, and what’s the solution?
By Russell Pearlman / Illustrations by Tim Ames
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Still, during the COVID-19 pandemic, employees showed far more trust in their employers than they did in many public institutions. Indeed, experts argue that the pandemic, with the massive shift to remote work by tens of millions of people around the world, was one of the most successful examples of marketplace trust in history. But ever since the lifting of the lockdowns, a growing sense of distrust has been brewing between employees and bosses. Alexandra Suchman, a consultant who helps firms build stronger workplace cultures, believes much of the trust breakdown can be traced to the growth in remote work—or, more broadly, to people not working in the same place at the same time. “When there are fewer people working face-to-face, there are fewer chances to build relationships and, by extension, trust,” she says.
In the absence of those interactions, statistics revealed a decline in productivity in 2022 and 2023—leading bosses to suspect that remote workers weren’t giving their jobs their full attention. Routinely, they saw figures demonstrating that many people were playing golf and watching Netflix during the middle of the day. In response, CEOs who had promised to retain remote-work options after the pandemic changed their tune: Workers would have to be in the office some—or all—of the time. Some actively blocked remote workers from bonuses and career progression.
Others took even more aggressive action, installing workplace-surveillance software to monitor employees’ keystrokes and screen time on company-owned devices. “If leaders show they don’t trust their employees, employees can, in turn, conclude that their leaders are not worth trusting
as well,” says Robert Bird, a professor of business law at the University of Connecticut School of Business. All of this has both increased employee burnout and reduced trust. “Leaders were essentially squeezing the lemon, then blaming the lemon when it’s out of juice,” says Sean Stewart, a Chicago-based leadership coach and historian.
For their part, numerous employees gave bosses few reasons to trust them (remember the “quiet quitting” phenomenon?). Many balked at return-to-office policies, daring employers to punish them. Others tried to exploit remote-work options, holding multiple jobs without telling employers. In one extreme case, Everson, the CEO, says one of his clients hired a freelancer to work on a project who delegated the job to his cousin. “In the remote-work world, impersonation is a real thing,” Everson says.
Of course, isolated incidents of employee dishonesty and workplace crackdowns don’t mean that all trust is gone. And some experts do cite data suggesting people still trust their employer more than they do government or the media. Still, it doesn’t take much for trust to begin fraying. And that matters enormously to corporate leaders, especially in an era in which few colleagues are working at the same time in the same place. Without some degree of trust between bosses and employees, collaboration, innovation, and organizational effectiveness can suffer. Indeed, a lack of trust is a huge factor in why so many employees feel disengaged at work. Workers who believe bosses don’t value their opinions or their work can become less productive, less willing to collaborate, less innovative, and more willing to quit. That disengagement is extremely expensive, potentially costing the world economies, by some estimates, as much as $7.8 trillion annually in lost productivity.
Trust in the workplace has, in the grand scheme of human work, become critical only relatively recently. At the start of the Industrial Revolution,
and for a century afterward, bosses led and workers followed. Leaders
felt no compulsion to explain anything, and workers rarely had a say in organizational decisions. But after World War II, company leaders realized that achieving success in their large companies required them to empower more employees. No, bosses weren’t exactly prioritizing transparency, but many became more open to trusting employees to make sound decisions. Bosses also started rewarding employees for their trust and loyalty, offering generous pensions and opportunities for advancement. Employees, for their part, were willing to spend their entire careers
working for organizations, and bosses, they trusted.
This era of mutual trust evolved again in the 1980s and 1990s. Forward-thinking bosses continued to empower teams. They made changes to company policies based on employee feedback. Organizations realized that employees who felt trusted—and who could in turn trust their bosses—were usually more engaged and productive than those who didn’t.
Even as bosses tried to build trust at the employee level, however, massive changes were eroding trust around the world. Citizens everywhere began losing trust in governments, media, and other institutions. The economic shift from a manufacturing- to a services-oriented economy threw millions of people, who’d believed they had jobs for life, out of work. Defined benefit-retirement programs, in which companies promised a certain monthly pension after people retired, were phased out, replaced by programs that put the onus on employees to save. And if they didn’t? Tough luck. Images of millions of people losing their jobs and savings during the Great Recession only exacerbated the sense that leaders weren’t suffering as much. “Corporate America broke the promise with its employees,” says Miles Everson, CEO of software company MBO Partners and author of the forthcoming book Free Birds Revolution: The Future of Work and the Independent Mind, which looks at how freelancers can build trusting relationships with employers, and vice versa.
During some of those feedback sessions, his employees complained about the firm’s healthcare plan, so Taplin figured he’d do something about it.
He researched options and found a new vendor who offered equivalent
(or better) care options without higher costs. He fired the old vendor and announced to employees that they were getting a new plan.
And that’s when he noticed a break in trust. Sure, a majority of employees didn’t care about the change, Taplin says, but the ones who didn’t like it were livid. You didn’t give us advance notice, they told him. We didn’t get to ask questions. Suddenly, he was watching all the rapport he’d spent years building begin to crumble. “I work hard to not make big changes
like that, but when you do it creates distrust,” Taplin says.
In the post-pandemic world, companies and employees have gone through a number of high-profile changes. Many firms got rid of the high salaries they needed to offer to fill roles, for example, and began demanding that workers spend more time in the office. But something else has changed
in the workplace: A lot of the trust firms and employees built during COVID-19 has slipped away. Many employees today resent their firms for laying people off, and don’t understand why bosses are tracking them
so closely. Only 67 percent of employees highly trust their employer, according to one 2024 survey—a decline of 3 percentage points from 2022. In another survey, a full fourth of US professionals said they don’t believe their employer trusts them.
And that’s probably true. Many bosses have become frustrated with employees who are consistently disengaged, balk at in-office work requirements, or continually demand bigger titles and higher pay.
Experts say that any decline in trust is no small matter, as it can threaten an organization’s reputation, productivity, and profitability. Trust can be broken quickly, but can take months, even years, to rebuild. The kinds
of behaviors that erode trust in the workplace include corporate hubris, dishonesty, lack of transparency, and a company’s failure to adhere to
its own rules, says Herman Brodie, a UK-based behavioral-finance expert
who consults with firms regularly on trust issues. “And those behaviors
are increasingly common,” he adds.
The decline of trust—or lack of it—is weighing on the minds of many executives in this particularly challenging business environment. At least 40 percent of executives said in one survey that a lack of employee trust puts their firm’s productivity, operational efficiency, and product quality
at risk; another 38 percent said it can threaten profitability. Even with those numbers, Brodie worries that too many leaders are underestimating the damage eroding trust can have on their organizations. “A generalized lack of trust within the firm means that it will underperform its potential,” he says.
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For a variety of reasons, trust is eroding between leaders and employees.
Bosses who don’t create a bond with employees often wind up with underperforming organizations.
why it matters
For starters, employees and leaders need to work on
being accountable to each other.
The solution
Trust is essential in the culture Steve
Taplin has built at his company. He doesn’t expect
his full-time employees or contractors, most of
whom are scattered throughout North and South America, to be tethered to an office—all he asks
is that they update their calendars and keep
colleagues informed. He tries to establish clear, achievable goals and sets up regular progress checkpoints. And he schedules biweekly feedback sessions, so employees can get a read on how
their bosses think they’re performing, as well as
bring up any work- or company-related issues.
“No surprises,” says Taplin, CEO of Sonatafy, a
company that connects software developers
with firms needing IT help.
India: 91%
The Trust Test
So how do you get trust back? Experts say that there are some clear-cut ways to build—or in some cases, rebuild—it. But clear-cut doesn’t mean easy.
Successful trust-building will revolve in part around bosses making employees feel confident of their support, says Dennis Carey, vice chairman and co-leader of Korn Ferry’s Board Services practice. During a desperate time for his organization, one CEO Carey knows established a “war room” where his top lieutenants across the world were asked to grade emerging concerns: a red light to signal a big, immediate problem; a yellow light to indicate caution; or a green light if things were going really well. Initially, the lieutenants tried to appear on top of everything by only signaling green lights. But the CEO gently pushed back. “This CEO would say that nothing is ever perfect and ask how everyone around the world could collaborate and help,” Carey says. Soon, yellow- and red-light issues began emerging, as did collaboration. Fear evaporated, Carey says, and trust blossomed. “If the lieutenants were asking for help, they would get rewarded,” he says.
Building trust also involves being transparent and holding yourself and others accountable for their words and actions. “That might mean leaders will need to keep promises even if that becomes financially inconvenient,” says Bird, the business professor. Another tip: Focus less on monitoring activities and more on outputs. “That’s what I care about, versus are they sitting at their desk eight hours a day,” Taplin says. And consider sticking to return-to-office policies or other broad goals for more than a few months at a time. If a business is changing its approach that often, Taplin says, it might be a sign of a lack of leadership.
On the employee side, Stewart says it starts with trusting that company leaders are not out to get them. Bosses should reward integrity and accountability, he says, and employees should accept those rewards graciously. Employees should try to have candid conversations with their bosses, even if this makes them feel vulnerable. New employees should
figure out the best ways to communicate with one another. Some will prefer email, others quick face-to-face check-ins. And tackle tough issues early.
“You don’t have to become best friends, but understanding each other is crucial,” says Alex Ponomarev, founder of a boutique software agency who writes regularly about managing engineering teams.
Above all, experts say, corporate leaders need to be willing to listen,
and employees need to be willing to express concerns. When marketing executive Teresha Aird was telling her team members about a major reorganization the company was about to undertake, she didn’t understand why few of them expressed concern or asked questions. Finally, one worker confided that the team members didn’t think their opinions would be valued, prompting Aird to hold individual sessions to reassure team members that she would take their feedback to senior leaders. “We demonstrated that
the input led to tangible actions,” she says.
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Where Did The Trust Go?
When there are fewer people working face-to-face, there are fewer chances to build relationships and trust.”
“
Workers expressing trust in their employer, by country.
Workers around the world put a lot of faith in their companies.
Saudi Arabia: 88%
China: 88%
Mexico: 84%
US: 79%
Japan: 60%
Germany: 76%
UK: 77%
France: 77%
A generalized lack of trust within the
firm means that it
will underperform its potential.”
“
Percentage of workers who don’t feel trusted
by their employer, by tenure on the job
But many don’t feel trusted by their bosses
Percentage of leaders who have a great deal of trust
in their employees, by employee-career level
Some bosses are indeed skeptical
25%
50%
53%
45%
38%
27%
28%
26%
29%
Less than one year
1-2 years
2-5 years
More than
5 years
Entry-level
employees
Experienced staff
Management below the C-Suite
C-suite colleagues
Sources: 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, 2023 Slack Pulse Survey, 2024 PwC Trust in US Business Survey
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
Bosses lose employee trust by:
How to Lose Trust Fast
Employees lose their bosses’ trust by:
Showing favoritism
for certain employees
based on something besides performance
Changing policies frequently or
withholding critical information about
the changes
Embarrassing other coworkers or stealing credit
Flouting in-office requirements
Making frequent mistakes
Not giving employees autonomy or flexibility
in how they do their job
Not asking for employee input or feedback
Not following through on commitments
Not doing what they say they’ll do
Not responding
to questions in a reasonable amount
of time
During some of those feedback sessions, his employees complained about the firm’s healthcare plan, so Taplin figured he’d do something about it. He researched options and found a new vendor who offered equivalent (or better) care options without higher costs. He fired the old vendor and announced to employees that they were getting a
new plan.
And that’s when he noticed a break in trust. Sure, a majority of employees didn’t care about the change, Taplin says,
but the ones who didn’t like it were livid. You didn’t give
us advance notice, they told him. We didn’t get to ask questions. Suddenly, he was watching all the rapport he’d spent years building begin to crumble. “I work hard to not make big changes like that, but when you do it creates distrust,” Taplin says.
In the post-pandemic world, companies and employees
have gone through a number of high-profile changes. Many firms got rid of the high salaries they needed to offer to
fill roles, for example, and began demanding that workers spend more time in the office. But something else has changed in the workplace: A lot of the trust firms and employees built during COVID-19 has slipped away. Many employees today resent their firms for laying people off,
and don’t understand why bosses are tracking them so closely. Only 67 percent of employees highly trust their employer, according to one 2024 survey—a decline of 3 percentage points from 2022. In another survey, a full
fourth of US professionals said they don’t believe their employer trusts them.
And that’s probably true. Many bosses have become frustrated with employees who are consistently disengaged, balk at in-office work requirements, or continually demand bigger titles and higher pay.
Experts say that any decline in trust is no small matter, as
it can threaten an organization’s reputation, productivity,
and profitability. Trust can be broken quickly, but can take months, even years, to rebuild. The kinds of behaviors that erode trust in the workplace include corporate hubris, dishonesty, lack of transparency, and a company’s failure to adhere to its own rules, says Herman Brodie, a UK-based behavioral-finance expert who consults with firms regularly on trust issues. “And those behaviors are increasingly common,” he adds.
The decline of trust—or lack of it—is weighing on the minds of many executives in this particularly challenging business environment. At least 40 percent of executives said in one survey that a lack of employee trust puts their firm’s productivity, operational efficiency, and product quality
at risk; another 38 percent said it can threaten profitability. Even with those numbers, Brodie worries that too many leaders are underestimating the damage eroding trust can have on their organizations. “A generalized lack of trust within the firm means that it will underperform its potential,” he says.
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
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