Declining employee trust poses threat.

• Position: Business Briefs - Brief Article

Companies aiming to resolve the investor crisis of confidence might start internally -- with their own employees. Worker trust and confidence in senior management has fallen over the past two years to record lows, according to Watson Wyatt's WorkUSA 2002 survey of nearly 13,000 workers, conducted by international human consulting firm Watson Wyatt & Co.

Key findings include: Fewer than two out of five (39 percent) of the respondents say they trust senior leaders at U.S. companies; and there was a five-point drop from 2000 to 2002 in both the percentage of employees (45 percent) who say they have confidence in the job being done by senior management and the percentage of workers (63 percent) who believe their companies conduct business with honesty and integrity.

"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," says Ilene Gochman, Ph.D., Watson Wyatt's national practice leader for organization measurement and author of...