Employee trust is measurable in how workers evaluate leaders, fairness, communication, job security, and their willingness to stay. Recent findings range from 20% of U.S. employees strongly trusting organizational leadership in May 2026 to 75% of employees in Edelman’s 22-market average trusting their employer to do what is right in 2025. The figures below keep each survey’s geography, period, and wording visible.
Contents
- Global employee trust in employers and top management
- Trust in CEOs, managers, and leadership communication
- Trust, fairness, and ethical employer conduct
- Employee trust during change, technology, and job insecurity
- Employee voice, conflict, and psychological safety
- Trust-linked engagement, retention, and performance
Global employee trust in employers and top management
U.S. employee confidence in organizational leadership has remained low in Gallup’s leadership indicator series. In May 2026, 20% of U.S. employees strongly agreed that they trust their organization’s leadership. The comparable result was 19% in August 2025, 23% in May 2024, and 24% at the series’ 2019 peak. These are U.S. measures and should not be read as a global average. Global Indicator: Leadership & Management - Gallup
Financial confidence was also lower in the recent U.S. figures than in the earlier comparison. In August 2025, 24% of U.S. employees strongly agreed that they were confident in their company’s financial future, compared with 37% in 2018. The measure concerns confidence in the company’s financial future, not trust in leadership itself. Global Indicator: Leadership & Management - Gallup
PwC’s 2026 survey of nearly 50,000 global workers found that trust in management fell 7 percentage points year over year. The survey also shows a large difference by worker group: 75% of global front-runner workers trusted top management and 82% trusted their immediate manager, while the corresponding figures for engine-room workers were 33% and 40%.
Edelman’s 2025 survey provides a broader employer measure. In its 22-market global average, 75% of employees trusted their employer to do what is right, compared with 73% in the comparable 2018 series. The 2024–2025 change was a decrease of 3 percentage points in the 22-market employee average. This is a trust-in-employer measure, so it is not directly interchangeable with Gallup’s U.S. trust-in-leadership question. 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report
| Measure | Result | Period and scope |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. employees strongly trusting organizational leadership | 20% | May 2026, U.S. |
| Employees trusting employer to do what is right | 75% | 2025, Edelman 22-market average |
| Front-runner workers trusting top management | 75% | 2026, PwC global survey |
| Engine-room workers trusting top management | 33% | 2026, PwC global survey |
Trust in CEOs, managers, and leadership communication
Leadership trust is connected to whether employees understand and believe the direction set by senior people. In August 2025, only 16% of U.S. employees said their company’s leadership made them enthusiastic about the future. The same 16% strongly agreed that leadership communicates effectively with the rest of the company. Gallup reported that U.S. employees who strongly agreed that leadership communicates effectively were 61% less likely to feel burned out. Global Indicator: Leadership & Management - Gallup
Gallup also found that employees who strongly agreed they trust organizational leadership were 3.7 times as likely to be engaged at work. Engagement is an associated outcome in this finding, not proof that trust alone causes engagement. The broader 2025 Gallup World Poll recorded 22% of managers worldwide as engaged at work. Global Indicator: Leadership & Management - Gallup
Edelman’s 2025 results distinguish trust in a respondent’s own CEO from trust in CEOs generally. Among employees with low grievance, 72% trusted their own CEO and 64% trusted CEOs in general. Among employees with moderate grievance, the figures were 65% and 50%. Among employees with high grievance, they were 51% and 30%. Across Edelman’s 27-market global average, 67% trusted their own CEO to do what is right, while 53% trusted CEOs in general to do what is right. 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report
The gap between personal and general CEO trust matters for leadership guides: employees may judge direct experience more favorably than the wider institution or executive class. The grievance breakdown also shows that trust varies substantially with employees’ experience of unresolved concerns.
Trust, fairness, and ethical employer conduct
Fair treatment is a central test of whether an employer does what is right. In Edelman’s 2025 U.S. fairness and opportunity survey, 66% of U.S. employees trusted their own employer to do what is right when addressing discrimination in the United States. At the same time, 67% of U.S. respondents said they had experienced discrimination at work. Up to 77% of Black U.S. respondents reported experiencing unfair conduct at work or in other contexts, and 72% of U.S. young adults aged 18–24 reported experiencing unfair conduct at work or in other contexts. 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Fairness and Opportunity in the U.S.
The same report found that 45% of U.S. respondents who believe systemic racism exists said it will be worse in five years. That result was up 19 points from May 2023. The comparison describes a change between the May 2023 and 2025 survey results; it does not establish why the change occurred. 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Fairness and Opportunity in the U.S.
Job security is another ethical-employer concern. In Edelman’s 2025 survey, 62% of employees said international trade conflicts threatened their job security, 59% said foreign competitors threatened it, and 58% said automation threatened it. These perceptions show why explanations about business risk and technology can influence trust even when leaders cannot remove the underlying uncertainty. 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report
Employee trust during change, technology, and job insecurity
PwC’s 2024 global workforce survey describes a workplace where change was widespread but not always well explained. Sixty-two percent of global workers said they experienced more change at work than in the preceding 12 months, 40% said their daily responsibilities changed to a large or very large extent, and 44% did not understand why workplace changes were taking place. Meanwhile, 45% said their workload had increased significantly in the prior year. Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2024 | PwC
Confidence and satisfaction were mixed. Sixty percent of PwC’s global workers felt extremely or very confident in their job security, and 60% were very or moderately satisfied with their job. The prior-year job-satisfaction result was 56% in the 2023 survey. Yet 28% were very or extremely likely to switch employers within 12 months in 2024, compared with 19% who reported that likelihood during the 2022 Great Resignation. Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2024 | PwC
Learning opportunities appear especially relevant to workers considering a move. Only 46% of PwC’s global workers moderately or strongly agreed that their employer provided adequate opportunities to learn useful new skills. Among workers likely to switch employers, 67% said learning opportunities would influence that decision to a large or very large extent. Also, 51% of workers likely to switch agreed that required job skills would change significantly within five years, compared with 29% of workers unlikely to switch. Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2024 | PwC
Financial pressure adds another layer. Fifty-two percent of PwC’s global workers said they were financially stressed to some degree. Trust during transformation therefore depends not only on announcing a change, but also on making its consequences, support, and skill requirements understandable.
Employee voice, conflict, and psychological safety
The CIPD’s 2024 survey of workers in northern England links workplace conflict with lower trust and less employee influence. Twenty-five percent of workers experienced workplace conflict during the prior year. Among those who experienced conflict, 37% trusted senior leaders to act with integrity, compared with 61% among workers who did not experience conflict. North of England Good Work Index: Workplace conflict puts strain on northern workers’ health and trust in management | CIPD
Voice measures showed the same pattern. Thirty-three percent of workers who experienced workplace conflict felt managers responded to employee suggestions, versus 49% of workers who did not experience conflict. Twenty-eight percent of the conflict-experienced group felt managers allowed employees to influence final decisions, compared with 41% of the group without workplace conflict.
Fairness also differed: 37% of northern England workers who experienced workplace conflict felt they were paid fairly, compared with 55% of those who did not experience workplace conflict. These results are regional survey findings, not estimates for all workers in the United Kingdom. North of England Good Work Index: Workplace conflict puts strain on northern workers’ health and trust in management | CIPD
Trust-linked engagement, retention, and performance
Trust statistics become operationally important when they align with engagement, mobility, and managers’ day-to-day influence. In Gallup’s May 2026 U.S. employee series, 55% were watching for or actively seeking a new job. Gallup also reports that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, according to its 2026 report. The figures indicate why trust-building cannot be limited to executive messaging: managers shape much of employees’ everyday experience. Global Indicator: Leadership & Management - Gallup
PwC’s 2026 global survey adds a financial and retention context. Eighty-five percent of global front-runner workers felt very confident about their job security, while 29% were very or extremely likely to change employer within a year. Across PwC’s global workers, only 34% could pay bills and have money left over at month-end, and 62% said cost-of-living pressures had a moderate or major impact on them at work. Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2026 | PwC
Taken together, these measures point to several leadership priorities that can be monitored without treating correlation as causation: communicate the reasons for change, make skill development visible, respond to employee suggestions, apply fairness consistently, and equip managers to handle concerns. The available statistics show the size of the trust gaps and their association with engagement, burnout, conflict, job security, and intent to leave; they do not provide a single universal trust benchmark for every organization.