Preserving employee trust during crisis

Abstract

Employees’ trust in their organization is vital during crises and disruption. It powerfully facilitates employees’ ability to respond constructively to crises and change, and it underpins organizational agility and resilience. Yet it is during such episodes that trust is most threatened. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this conundrum has organizational leaders asking, How can we preserve employee trust in the face of the financial and other challenges posed by the outbreak? In this article, we synthesize and extrapolate from related research on trust to delineate the key practical actions that leaders can take to preserve trust. The research shows that during crises, employee trust can not only be preserved, it can even be enhanced.