Employees losing faith

Recent mammoth corporate fraud in the U.S. is making employees suspicious of senior management, impacting the bottom line

Employers are losing the trust of the workforce in the wake of gigantic corporate accounting fraud, according to a study of U.S. workers.

“Employee trust levels and corporate performance are closely linked,” said Ilene Gochman, author of Watson Wyatt’s WorkUSA 2002 Survey.

According to the study, 39 per cent of employees trust senior leaders at U.S. companies. Moreover, there was a five point drop from 2000 to 2002 in both the percentage of employees (45 per cent) who say they have confidence in the job being done by senior management and the percentage of workers (63 per cent) who believe their companies conduct business with honesty and integrity.

“Falling levels of employee trust are a major threat to future corporate competitiveness,” said Gochman. “Unless corporate America can resolve the crisis of confidence among its employees, it has little hope of restoring the trust and confidence of investors that is so crucial in these economic times.”

Gochman said companies should focus efforts in several areas, including assessment, communication and effectively managing business change, to restore employee trust.

“With fewer than half of employees expressing confidence in senior management, no company has been left untouched by the fallout from recent turmoil in the business environment,” said Gochman. “By assessing just how far trust levels have fallen at their specific organizations, companies can gain insight into the depth of the problem among their workers and establish a baseline against which to measure the success of their efforts to restore trust.”

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