The Four Factors of Trust

APPENDIX CThe Demographics That Matter Most for Workers

The top variables associated with trust levels for workers were consistent (but not identical) across all Four Factors.

The most significant variables we found were:

• Job level: The more senior you are, the more trusting you are.
• Flexible working schedule: Those who have flexibility are more trusting, possibly from a sense of greater agency to influence their work experience.
• Organization type: Those who work for privately owned (versus publicly traded companies or the government) are likely to be more trusting.

The more senior a worker is, the more trusting they are

Appendix C.1

Job Level

The higher workers move up in job level, the more likely they are to trust their employer. In our research, lower‐level staff are only about 70 percent as trusting as executives. The closer workers are “to the top,” the more they understand organizational strategy, and the more involved they are in the decision‐making process. Seniority gives a worker important positional power. Therefore, when a worker is more senior, he or she has greater agency than those lower in the hierarchy. In addition, understanding the inner workings of an organization gives a worker more informed expectations, as well as greater positional power to get expectations met.

Business leaders overestimate the trust of their workforce

Appendix C.2