Not much belief left in the system

Here are the results, based on survey responses from 832 people, mainly from medium- sized firms (who, of course, could well be managers themselves as well as having their own supervisor).

Yes 15%

No 80%

Don't know 5%

Question two: Do you think your employees trust their immediate supervisor?

Yes 30%

No 65%

Don't know 5%

Question one: Do you think employees believe what top management tells them about the future plans and direction of your firm?

This is pretty heady stuff. While top managers can expect little sympathy from the cannon-fodder they daily send over the top into a hail of bullets with no idea where they are or what they are supposed to be doing, the supervisor vote is a lot more shocking. Two-thirds of the respondents don't trust their immediate supervisor. How can you run anything like an efficient organisation if two- thirds of your employees don't trust the person they work for? That more than anything else shows that there is a great deal of work for companies, large and small, across every industry, to do to restore some semblance of respect for those who toil on their behalf .

And if that is not enough, another survey that asked, ˜Have you witnessed a decline in employee trust in the last five years ?' got a resounding YES out of two-thirds of the respondents. The survey also reported on a question that asked ˜Is trust an issue for your firm?' 77 per cent said YES. ^[1]

These results were mirrored in that most active hire-and-fire economy, the US. A 2003 poll by broadcaster CNN, that came hard on the heels of some of the worst corporate scandals, found that less than 17 per cent of Americans rated business executives highly (down from a score of 25 per cent a year before). ^[2]

While this might not be surprising in the wake of the publicity that these huge market scams generated, we also need to be careful of judging too harshly. Not every Andersen, Enron, Global Crossing and Parmalat executive had his fingers in the cookie jar. I know for a fact that many executives were horrified by what happened in the companies they worked for. When Shell was exposed overstating its reserves I spoke with several Shell personnel who were overwhelmed that their company - with its great history and great corporate culture - could ever do such a thing. But they were all tainted and one of those I talked to - at least - has already moved on.

And don't for a minute think that it is only giant, global multi- nationals who are capable of bad practices. Small and medium-sized businesses are too. But as they don't create the same headlines you rarely read of these things outside the local press.

And this is one of the key things employers need to be very clear about. If the employees don't trust you, because you have left a string of unfulfilled promises behind, they are not going to tell you much. They'll act on their own. Little things that employees do can amount to a lot at the end of the day, and can, eventually, cause problems. When you consider that twice as many employees in the US took sick days for personal need in 2003 as in 2002, that sends a very personal, yet collective, message. The message is, ˜Hey, I had too many beers last night, don't feel too good. Aw heck, I'll just stay home.' Twice as many? Do you know what that means to an economy? America isn't losing jobs to India and China, it is losing them to apathy.

Interestingly, in the course of the research process, I interviewed an American HR specialist working in Switzerland. She had worked out that, on average, Europeans and Americans actually had the same number of days off a year, except they just organised it differently. The Europeans had Saints Days and government holidays, the Americans just went sick!

^[1] Survey of 250 HR managers attending the European Human Resources Conference in 2002

^[2] CEOs and other executives can take comfort from the fact that despite those dismal scores they are not the worst category. Telemarketers at 6 per cent and car salesmen at 5 per cent fared much worse .