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Not to be all Jim and Dwight, but there seem to be some trust issues in the workplace these days. Case in point: Business executives tend to overestimate how much their employees trust them, according to the 2024 PwC Trust in Business survey. Of the executives surveyed, 86% said staff “highly trust” their employers. But only 67% of employees said they actually highly trust the companies they work for.
PwC surveyed 548 business executives, 2,039 employees, and 2,515 consumers in the US in January 2024. It defined an answer of eight to 10 on a one to 10 scale as being “highly trusting.”
Staff at all levels tend to distrust one another, the survey found. Only 52% of employees say they trust their colleagues “to a great extent.” Executives were even less trusting: Only 45% trusted their peers. Just 44% of C-suite members said they trusted one another to a great extent.
Lukewarm trust in remote workers: Only around two-thirds (68%) of executives said they trusted remote and in-person workers to the same degree. Slightly fewer employees (60%) believe employers extend the same level of trust to both remote and in-office staff.
Employees chose providing flexibility around when work gets done (71%) and the location of work (69%) as the top two ways employers could build their trust. Perhaps not surprisingly, 25% said tracking time spent in-office eroded trust, and 32% said the same about employee surveillance.
Customer trust gap: Executives are also overconfident about how much customers trust them, the survey found. Ninety percent of executives think customers “highly trust” their companies, but only 30% of customers said they “highly trust” companies.