Half your people don't trust you. Here's why that matters and what you can do about it.
Just half of UK employees trust their CEOs and senior leaders. That’s according to the latest IC Index from the Institute of Internal Communication. And that figure has fallen nine points compared to the previous year (59% in 2025).
This decline in trust is not surprising. AI is causing valid concerns about job security and the rate of change in organisations, including restructures and redundancies, continues to increase.
Employees feel leaders don’t understand how difficult this is.
Just last week, Meta asked their employees to work from home for the day and then started emailing mass layoffs at 4am. Oracle took a similar approach with their emails starting at 6am. The CEO of Standard Charter referred to the people they were firing as ‘lower value human capital’ (he’s since apologised).
While it feels like the tech bros are in a race to replace their workforce with AI, there are many leaders who will be concerned about this decline in trust. Leaders who know that a team that doesn’t trust its leaders is not going to give their best.
87% of leaders think their strategy has been clearly communicated, their teams disagree
Another worrying and related downwards trend is the discrepancy between how well leaders believe they’ve communicated strategy and what employees understand.
Only 64% of employees are clear on their org’s strategy, down 5 points in the past two years (this drops to 57% among non-managerial roles)
Consequently, only 62% say they know how they can personally contribute, down 3 points
Just 61% know how the company is performing, down 4 points in the last year
Only 52% believe the strategy is the right one, down 6 points in the last year
While 76% of managers feel equipped to talk to their teams about what's happening across the business, this is also down 4pts from last year.
This perception gap is one of the most common problems we see with our clients. Leaders assume that because they’ve talked about their strategy in a town hall, sent an all-staff email or uploaded their strategy deck to the intranet, it’s been heard, understood and believed. But saying something, and it landing are not the same thing.
While leaders look to AI to do ‘more with less’, how many are thinking about how much more they could achieve if the 36% that weren’t clear on their org’s strategy, were? And how much more successful they could be if their workforce didn't just understand the strategy but also had trust in their leaders and were motivated to act?
Like that janitor helping put a man on the moon.
Here’s what you can do to regain your employees’ trust:
1 Talk about your strategy in a way your people can get behind
Get out of PowerPoint and write down your story. Why you exist and for who, where you want to get to and how you’re going to get there. Delete the jargon and cliches and use language that inspires.
Once you have a story your team can get behind, tell it over and over again. It’s not once communicated, job done. Everything should link back to your strategy. And be creative in how you communicate. According to the survey, employees have just 10 minutes or less a day to engage with comms and more than half of managers spend 30 minutes or less a day communicating with their teams.
Our advice: A great way to turn your strategy into one that inspires is to use your customers’ language.
2 Be visible, listen and respond to feedback
To gain trust, create a workplace where people feel safe to speak up. Of those surveyed, only 49% said they felt comfortable sharing their views without being scared of the consequences. That means your teams aren’t asking when they don’t understand, sharing their ideas, or talking to you before they leave you for the competition.
Face-to-face remains employees’ preferred way of hearing important news, up 11 points on 2023. Done well, regular face-to-face comms can build trust and lead to a better understanding of your strategy. But be careful not to save face-to-face for bad news, as that can have the opposite effect and destroy trust.
Our advice: Your engagement survey comments are a goldmine for understanding how your employees feel, and acting on them shows that you’re listening.
3 Help your people deal with change
More than half of employees surveyed said their organisation restructured in the last year — up 12 points since 2024. A third reported redundancies, also up 12 points.
Fewer than half of employees said the reasons for change were clear, and only 42% said their organisation is good at helping them get through it.
How people find out about change matters as much as the change itself. Employees who hear about major decisions directly from the CEO or senior leaders have significantly higher levels of trust than those who hear on the grapevine.
All companies go through change. But those who are committed to treating their people with respect and dignity can get through it positively, even when letting people go.
Our advice: Don’t forget your frontline. Team members without computers are less likely to hear directly from leaders.
4 Help your managers be better communicators
Managers remain the most trusted source of information to their employees and they rely on them to make sense of what things mean.
While three-quarters of managers said they feel equipped to talk about what’s going on across the company, this is slightly down on previous years and possibly due to the increasing amount of change.
Ensuring your managers have the information and skills to communicate well is a huge opportunity to increase trust. As line manager Stephen Welch said in his brilliant LinkedIn post:
‘When you think about communication from the employees’ point of view, 90-95% of it comes from me (the boss), their colleagues, or other teams in the business. Only 5-10% of Internal Communications in organizations comes from you guys in the Internal Communications department…. But the person who ‘owns’ internal communication is, actually, me, your friendly neighbourhood line manager. And it is my communication skills, how I work with the team, and how I lead them, that is going to have the biggest impact on employees’ day-to-day performance, engagement and motivation.”
Our advice: never sign off a message about change with ‘If you want more information, speak to your manager’, unless you’ve fully briefed your managers.
5 Have a people strategy for AI
Most companies are pushing ahead with AI. But few have thought through how they talk to employees about AI and what it means for the future of the company and people’s jobs.
Just 35% of employees think that AI is being used for the right things within their orgs. And less than one in three feel their employer has clearly communicated how they’re expected to use AI in their jobs.
Leaders are positioning AI as an opportunity for their employees to work more strategically. But those same employees can see people losing jobs to AI.
AI, like any major change, needs a people and comms strategy if you’re going to avoid haemorrhaging trust.
Our advice: Don’t rely on measures such as how many people in your org have signed up to co-pilot to understand how well your team is dealing with AI.
We’d love to help
None of this is particularly complicated but it does take thought, care and time. Doing it consistently, while the pressure is on, the news is tough, and your diary is full, is hard.
We’d love to talk to you about how we can help translate your strategy into a story people can get behind and communicate it in a way that builds trust.
The IC Index is an online survey with a representative quota sample of 5,000 UK workers (in organisations with 500 or more employees) aged 18–75 between 15 and 29 January 2026.
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The power of writing down your customer promise
