I suspect that no one will argue that employee trust is a good thing. Sometimes there can be some surprises, though, when questions are asked about what exactly the payoff might be.
In Deloitte's 2010 annual Ethics In the Workplace survey, subjects were asked to choose two of five factors they felt to be the most positively affected by an employee's trust in their employer. The five factors among which they had to choose were morale, teambuilding & collaboration, productivity & profitability, ethical decision-making and willingness to stay with the company. Their data was then grouped into employee and executive responses and it is the difference between those two groups that is perhaps of the greatest interest.
By a margin of close to two to one (66% versus 36%), executives versus employees felt that productivity and profitability were most affected by employee trust and also by close to two to one (35% versus 16%) employees versus executives felt that ethical decision-making was most affected by employee trust. Most interesting of all? Executives' perception that ethical decision-making is most affected by their trust in their employer was the lowest percentage by far for any factor by either group.
What does this all mean? Frankly, the general nature of this portion of the survey's questions allows a variety of interpretations. What we can take from this portion of the survey, however, are the following:
1. Don't assume that your views as either an executive or employee are the same as the other group's regarding what is driving the ethics—or anything else for that matter—of your organization. You need to ask—and not just superficial questions; you need to really understand.
2. If you don't believe that ethics and employee trust are related in your organization, that is a significant disconnect—they ought to be directly connected. Find out whether or not that disconnect is actually there and, if so, what you can do to simultaneously leverage ethical decision-making and employee trust—each should drive the other.
3. If you believe that employee trust is a "non-factor" in the success of your organization, you are fooling yourself, plain and simple. How it affects your organization may be different than for the organization next door but make no mistake, employee trust is critical. Know how and why it matters for your employees and executives. Then use that information to assure that the building and maintenance of that trust is a top priority for every single person in the organization.
Christopher Bauer helps companies create and implement high-impact, high-ROI ethics and values training programs. In addition to consultation on program development and implementation, he also provides keynotes and seminars on how to reduce costly employee ethics problems. Information on Bauer Ethics Seminars is available at
