Trust Issues

Training & Development, Aug 2008 by Nancherla, Aparna

Employees have more confidence in their own managers than in top execs.

Which term would an employee be more likely to use to describe the company CEO: trustworthy or deceptive?

Given the number of recent corporate scandals, the latter term is the likely choice. However, the distrust does not filter down to middle management.

BlessingWhite, a New Jerseybased consulting agency, conducted the survey, "The State of Employee Engagement 2008," which revealed that employees trust their own managers more than top management, by a sizable margin.

The study of more than 7,500 workers on four continents revealed that 75 percent of employees trust their own managers, compared with only 60 percent who trust the senior leaders of the organization.

Chris Rice, CEO of BlessingWhite, explains that this lack of trust could be related to the discrepancy between what senior leaders say they will do and what they actually do.

"When it comes to standard things that are done in companies-changes of strategy, terminations, acquisitions, closing down product lines, opening up product lines-the typical employee does not know all the details," he says. "A common misunderstanding of executives is the idea that if they communicate something once, it satisfies all of the requirements."

In North America, only 53 percent of employees trusted their senior leaders, compared with 75 percent who trusted their direct managers. On the other hand, 22 percent did not trust the senior leaders of their organization, compared with only 13 percent who did not trust their managers.

The difficulty senior leaders encounter when building or rebuilding trust is that they are somewhat removed from the rest of the company.

"Most top executives don't regularly get to interact with employees, which puts a burden on mem to take care in how they communicate and behave," Rice says. And he has some suggestions for improving relations within companies.

"I think executives need to dedicate more time to different forms of communication than they typically do," Rice says. "They should be doing town hall meetings and presentations. But all executives get very busy, and they've moved onto another topic when employees are still processing the last tiling they announced."

"I trust my manager"

Disagree or strongly disagree ..... 13%

Neither agree nor disagree ....... 12%

Agree or strongly agree .......... 75%

"I trust the senior leaders of this organization"

Disagree or strongly disagree ...... 22%

Neither agree nor disagree ........ 25%

Agree or strongly agree ........... 53%

NOTE: Reflects respondents in North America.

Source: BlessingWhite

Aparna Nancherla is an associate editor for T D; anancherla@astd.org.