The Numbers Behind The Workplace Trust Gap
Trust is one of te most important engines of company culture because it shapes how people show up and contribute every day. Shared goals, effort, and trust are all core ingredients for a healthy company culture.
For the last few years, return‑to‑office mandates, surprise layoffs, and AI rollouts have shaken this up in many workplaces. The talent‑placement platform Howdy set out to answer a simple question: What does this mean for employees’ trust in leadership?
Howdy surveyed 1,004 full‑time U.S. employees this July and gathered responses from workers ages 19-70 across industries and companies of all sizes. Their online survey was designed to capture how employees perceive leadership behavior, decision‑making, and cultural alignment.
SURFACE LEVEL TRUST VS REALITY
On paper, things look pretty good with 79% of employees saying they like their leadership, and 74% saying they trust leadership as well. However, zooming out, things get a bit more complicated.
More than half of workers at 54% say they believe their company’s leaders “live in a different world” than they do. Another 60% said they believe leadership doesn’t work as hard as the employees, and 42% thought founders and CEOs are typically held to lower behavioral standards. A full 24% say leaders don’t even follow their own policies around PTO, office attendance, or basic professionalism. So while they trust leaders, they often feel that they are living in parallel work lives, with unequal expectations.
Employees seem a bit disturbed by this. At the end of the day, nearly a third of employees (31%) said they thought they could run the company they’re working for better themselves.
The sectors these employees worked in made a big difference in their perceived separation from leadership. On the higher end, a whole 86% of government workers felt that leadership operated in a totally different realm, while only 25% of construction employees said they felt that way.
WHERE TRUST BREAKS DOWN
When it comes to trust and lack thereof, layoffs unsurprisingly were found to be where the trust really breaks. Among the 27% of employees who experienced layoffs, 43% believe the cuts weren’t necessary for the company’s survival. What’s more is that over three in five employees said they are considering leaving because of their workplace’s leadership.
Trust is what companies should strive for. Indeed’s editorial team wrote a whole piece on why trust matters in the workplace. They say, “Trust may lead to more engagement at work since people may put more energy into work they can feel connected to.”
It’s one of the most important engines of company culture because it shapes how employees show up and contribute every day. When employees feel safe, supported, and believed in, the culture becomes more about shared purpose, which is exactly where successful organizations thrive.
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