On this episode of Reimagining Company Culture, we sat down with Ed Jaffe, Founder and Lead Coach of Demo Solutions. Ed has helped companies from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises tell stories and communicate value, contributing to millions of dollars in revenue and earning recognition as the top presales professional in his business unit at IBM. He teaches in the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University and built the sales operations and presales functions at a Chicago technology company before founding Demo Solutions.
Ed argued that trust at work is treated as a feeling when it is actually a set of behaviors. Companies that talk about trust in abstract terms produce abstract trust. Companies that name the specific behaviors that produce trust, train managers in them, and measure whether they are happening produce a different kind of workplace. He pushed back on the assumption that trust is the same thing as psychological safety. The two are related but not identical, and conflating them blurs the operational work both require.
That conversation matters because trust scores have been falling at most companies for several years, and the standard playbook of values campaigns and town halls has stopped moving the metric.
Why Workplace Trust Has Been Falling
The data tells the story. Edelman's Trust at Work special report finds that 79 percent of employees globally trust their employer, but trust is fragile and varies sharply by income, generation, and tenure. Employees who feel trusted by the CEO show twice the trust in their employer compared to those who do not. Eighty percent of employees say they expect easy ways to provide input to their employer, and 75 percent expect employers to include them in planning.
Trust is falling at companies that have invested in values work because the values work has not been paired with the operational behaviors that produce trust. Town halls without follow-through. Surveys without action. Statements without consequences. Each of those teaches employees that the words and the work do not match, and trust scores reflect that lesson within a year.
Companies that move trust scores back up do three things. They name the specific behaviors that produce trust. They train managers in those behaviors with the same rigor they train technical skills. And they instrument the experience so that drift gets caught before it becomes attrition.
The Difference Between Trust and Psychological Safety
What is the relationship between trust and psychological safety?
Psychological safety is the belief that you can speak up without retribution. Trust is the belief that the people around you will act in your interest. The two reinforce each other but are not identical. HBR research on psychological safety from Amy Edmondson and others shows that psychologically safe teams produce better decisions, more innovation, and higher performance, but the safety is built through specific manager behaviors, not values statements.
Which behaviors produce trust most reliably?
Three. Consistency between what you say and what you do. Transparency about decisions and their reasons. Reliability on small commitments, not just big ones. Companies that train managers on those three behaviors and measure them in upward feedback see trust scores move within a year.
What Actually Works: A Framework for Building Trust
Design principle one: name the trust-building behaviors explicitly
Replace abstract trust language with specific behavior statements. We update commitments when we are off track within 24 hours. We share the reasoning behind decisions, not just the decisions. We follow through on small things visibly so the big things land with credibility. Behaviors are observable. Trust is downstream.
Design principle two: instrument the experience, not just the values
Use pulse surveys to track trust-related items quarterly: manager reliability, leadership transparency, decision-making clarity. Pair pulses with a speak-up hotline that catches trust ruptures the survey scale misses. The combination produces a real-time view of where trust is being built and where it is being eroded.
Design principle three: protect the channels that surface trust ruptures
Trust ruptures most often surface in informal conversations that never reach HR. Confidential channels are how those signals reach the people who can act on them. The companies that protect their listening infrastructure with strict confidentiality and visible follow-through earn the next round of honest input.
Where Employee Relations Fits
Strong company culture programs treat ER infrastructure as the operating system that protects trust. Every case the ER team handles teaches the rest of the workforce what the company actually does when trust is tested. A consistent, fair, well-documented response strengthens trust across the company. An inconsistent response, even a well-intentioned one, undermines years of culture work.
How does ER infrastructure support trust at scale?
By giving employees a confidential channel for the concerns that fall short of formal complaints but still need to be heard. The pattern in those concerns informs organizational culture work, refines employee engagement programs, and improves mentoring design. Without that channel, trust ruptures stay invisible until they become attrition.
Frequently Asked Questions About Building Trust at Work
What is the fastest way to rebuild trust after a breach?
Acknowledge the breach specifically, name what changed because of it, and follow through visibly on the change. Generic apologies do not move trust. Specific accountability paired with operational change does.
How do you measure trust at work?
Through a short set of survey items tracked over time. Manager reliability. Leadership transparency. Decision-making clarity. Willingness to speak up. Track the items quarterly by team and watch trends. Trust dashboards are most useful when trends are visible alongside engagement and retention.
What role does psychological safety play in trust?
Psychological safety is the precondition. Without it, trust cannot grow because employees will not share the information that makes trust possible. For more on the operational definition of psychological safety, see our piece on what psychological safety actually means.
How long does it take to rebuild trust at scale?
One to three years for full recovery, depending on how badly the trust was damaged. The first six months is acknowledgement and visible commitment. The next year is consistent follow-through. The third year is when trust scores fully reflect the new behavior. Companies that try to compress the timeline rarely produce durable change.
What is the single biggest predictor of high-trust teams?
Manager consistency. The companies with the strongest trust scores are the ones that invest most heavily in manager development and remove or reassign managers whose patterns consistently break trust.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Ed's framing puts trust where it belongs: as a set of behaviors that can be named, trained, and measured. The companies that produce real trust outcomes are the ones that stopped treating trust as a feeling and started treating it as an operating discipline.
That work looks like manager training, listening infrastructure, and ER systems that catch trust ruptures before they become attrition. It also looks like leaders who are willing to be the first ones to follow through on the small commitments that prove the words and the work match.
Trust is built one consistent behavior at a time, and the companies that build it become the companies that everyone else is trying to recruit from.
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