Research Digested – The Trust Paradox – why behaviour, not belief, determines trust and how leaders can bridge the trust gap to drive performance, Investors in People 

About the research

In this survey of more than 1,000 employees and 500 HR leaders, Investors in People explore how trust is impacting performance and showing up through employee behaviours.

Key findings

  • Employees (93%) and HR leaders (100%) say trust is important at work
  • 48% of HR leaders are concerned that low trust in teams impacts productivity and 37% believe it leads to lower engagement. L
  • Only 7% of employees say low trust wouldn’t impact how they behave at work.

The research looks at how often workers ‘cover themselves’ – cover up when something goes wrong – and for 60% that’s often or very often.  The top five most avoided areas are:

  • Concerns about workload or burnout
  • Concerns about management behaviour
  • Disagreement with decisions
  • Ideas that challenge current ways of working
  • Organisational change.

These are probably the five most import areas that need to be discussed to improve well-being at work and to accelerate change and innovation.

And C-level leaders are twice as likely as employees to avoid speaking up about mistakes they have made.

One in five employees say trust at work has weakened their commitment to their organisation and when trust in leadership or the organisation is low, employees are most likely to…

  • Focus on protecting myself 29%
  • Do only what is required 25%
  • Look for another job 19%
  • Avoid taking risks or initiative 19%
  • Try and step up and make a positive difference 19%
  • Change how I work in response to monitoring or performance tracking 17%
  • Stop sharing ideas 12%
  • I haven’t experienced this 9%
  • I wouldn’t be likely to do anything 7%.

One in five employees say trust in their organisation is heavily dependent on who their manager is. The same number have avoided speaking up about concerns about manager behaviour at work.

The report suggests the following steps to build trust in the organisation:

  • Create the conditions for speaking up
  • Involve people early in decision-making
  • Give clarity – be clear what is expected of people
  • Give space for relationships
  • Focus on consistency and make it visible – turn feedback into action.

Read the research https://www.investorsinpeople.com/knowledge/the-trust-paradox/