About the paper
The report examines how internal communication shapes trust in UK workplaces, with a particular focus on leadership trust, strategy belief, change communication, AI, hybrid work and organisational stances on societal issues.
It is a mixed-methods report: the core evidence is a representative quota survey of 4,000 UK workers aged 18–64 in organisations with 500+ employees across the UK, fielded 6–20 March 2024, supplemented by a practitioner survey of 220 IoIC members and six senior-leader interviews; the report is UK-wide and the methodology is clearly stated.
Length: 29 pages
More information / download:
https://www.ioic.org.uk/resource/ic-index-2024-report-trust-issue.html
Core Insights
1. What is the report’s central argument about the relationship between internal communication and trust?
The central argument is that good internal communication is not a peripheral support function but a core condition for organisational trust. The report makes this case repeatedly: where employees rate internal communication as excellent, trust in leadership is far higher, engagement is stronger, and people are more likely to stay with their employer for longer. The report frames trust not as an abstract cultural nice-to-have, but as something communication actively builds, protects and, when mishandled, damages.
The report’s headline message is that “good IC is integral to trust” and that this matters especially in a context of uncertainty, continuous change and rising expectations around authenticity and empathy. It argues that communication is the basis of trust in workplace relationships and then tests that claim empirically through the Trust Index and associated measures. The data show a 74-point difference in trust in senior leaders between employees who rate communication as excellent and those who rate it as poor, which is an enormous gap and one of the strongest pieces of evidence in the report.
The report also suggests that communication matters most where personal contact is weaker. Trust in direct managers is higher than trust in senior leaders or the CEO, and the authors infer that communication becomes even more important as the distance between employees and leaders increases. In other words, for senior leadership, communication is not just a channel for trust; it is often the main mechanism through which trust is experienced at all.
So the report’s big idea is clear: internal communication is a strategic trust infrastructure. It influences whether employees think leaders are competent, honest, empathetic and acting in the right interests.
2. Which specific factors most strongly build trust in leaders and organisations?
The strongest trust-building factor across leadership levels is open and honest communication. On the report’s trust model, belief that employer communications are open and honest is the top driver of trust in both the CEO and the wider leadership team, and it also remains one of the top drivers for trust in direct managers. Alongside this, empathy matters greatly: employees need to feel that leaders understand the challenges they face.
For senior leaders and CEOs specifically, trust also depends heavily on strategic credibility. Employees must believe that the organisation’s strategy is the right one for success. The report goes further by identifying what most strengthens that belief: not just knowing what the strategy is, and not just hearing about progress, but understanding how one can personally contribute to achieving it. When employees know their own contribution, belief in the strategy jumps by 35 points compared with people who only know the strategy and its progress. That is one of the report’s most important causal clues.
For direct managers, slightly different drivers come to the fore. The most important is behavioural consistency: managers must act in line with the organisation’s values and behaviours. Frequency of communication also matters here; employees need to hear from their direct manager at least every few days to weekly. So trust in managers is built less by abstract strategy and more by visible, consistent, everyday conduct.
The report also shows that feeling valued and believing the organisation operates in employees’ best interests are powerful trust builders. In fact, employees who believe the organisation acts in employees’ best interests have the highest Trust Index scores. This means trust is not only about message quality. It is also about whether communication aligns with lived organisational reality. A polished message cannot compensate for a widespread belief that the organisation mainly serves profits, leadership interests or shareholder priorities.
3. What does the report reveal about the main trust weaknesses inside organisations today?
The report’s most striking weakness is that trust becomes more fragile the higher up the hierarchy you go. Overall trust is fairly positive, with a combined Trust Index of 63%, but this masks a steep gradient: 75% trust their direct manager, 58% trust the leadership team, and only 55% trust the CEO or most senior leader. Many employees are not openly negative so much as uncertain, especially about senior leaders. That suggests distance, inconsistency and lack of direct connection are key problems.
A second major weakness is perceived organisational self-interest. Only 43% believe their organisation operates in employees’ best interests, while larger proportions think organisations prioritise shareholders, profits and customers. This matters because belief that the organisation acts in employees’ interests is tightly linked to trust. The report also shows that this belief declines as organisation size increases, suggesting scale makes it harder to sustain a credible sense of mutuality between employer and employee.
A third weakness is the existence of distinct trust segments, including a sizeable cynical bloc. The report identifies four broad trust types: Total Trusters, Proof Seekers, Senior Sceptics and All-round Cynics. The last group makes up 22% of employees and is characterised by very low trust in managers, leaders and the organisation as a whole. This is important because it shows that mistrust is not evenly distributed. Some employees need more evidence, some mainly distrust senior leadership, and some are alienated across the board. That means communicators cannot assume a single audience psychology.
The report also points to a persistent communication inequality between digitally connected and non-connected workers. Employees who spend most of their time away from computers report lower satisfaction with communication and lower trust, especially in the CEO. This suggests that organisations still struggle to create equitable communication environments across frontline, operational and desk-based roles.
4. How does communication affect employees’ experience of change, AI and hybrid working?
The report treats these as live stress-tests of trust, and in each case communication emerges as decisive.
On change, the findings are particularly strong. Four in ten employees say their organisation has restructured in the last year, and many have experienced redundancies, negative headlines, business transformation or leadership change. Yet the report argues that low trust is not an inevitable consequence of change itself. Rather, it is a consequence of change in organisations where communication is poor. Among employees who have been through a restructure, those who rate communication as excellent are dramatically more likely to believe communications are open and honest and to trust senior leaders and the CEO. The gaps between excellent and poor communication are above 50 points on these measures.
Employees are also very clear on what better change communication looks like. They want clarity on the reasons behind change, honesty about the impact, and more listening. They also want earlier communication and more detail on the plan. The report’s underlying point is that people do not necessarily reject change itself; they reject opacity, spin and one-way communication.
On AI, the report finds a trust deficit, especially for communications that are supposed to feel human. Around one third would not trust at all a CEO message developed with AI, and similarly high scepticism exists for manager messages and AI-created visual content featuring people. Trust is somewhat higher for impersonal content such as newsletters, intranet articles or policy documents. The report’s interpretation is that AI is less acceptable when it appears to simulate human presence or voice. It also notes that employees with higher overall trust in their organisation are more comfortable with AI use, implying that AI adoption depends on prior trust, not just technical capability.
On hybrid work and return-to-office mandates, the findings are especially damaging. More than two in three employees do not believe the reason their employer gave for requiring office attendance. Employers most often cited collaboration, but many employees believe the real motive was oversight of working hours. The report presents this as a credibility gap: it is not simply that employees dislike the policy, but that they distrust the communicated rationale. That makes return-to-office communication a textbook example of how message–motive misalignment corrodes trust.
5. What are the practical implications for internal communicators and organisational leaders?
The report’s practical implication is that internal communication should be treated as a strategic lever for trust, retention and organisational performance, not as a downstream distribution function. The evidence gives communicators a stronger business case: excellent communication correlates with higher engagement, lower turnover intentions, stronger trust and greater belief in strategy. That means communication teams can argue for investment not only on cultural grounds, but on operational and performance grounds too.
For communicators, one implication is to focus less on message volume and more on message credibility. The report repeatedly rewards openness, honesty, empathy, clarity and visible listening. It suggests that communication works best when it helps employees understand not only what is happening, but why, what it means for them, and how their voice is being heard. This is especially important during change, where candour matters more than polish.
A second implication is that managers matter enormously as communication intermediaries. Employees value managers who listen, set clear objectives and offer personal support, yet only a minority of managers have been trained in key communication capabilities, especially change communication and support during personal issues. The report therefore points towards a practical priority: equip managers better, because they are central to trust formation, especially for less digitally connected workers.
A third implication is that leaders must communicate strategy in a participatory rather than merely explanatory way. Employees need to know how they personally contribute. This moves communication beyond broadcasting strategy slides and into helping people connect their work to organisational direction. That is where belief in strategy becomes materially stronger.
A fourth implication is that communicators and leaders need tighter alignment with HR and external communication. The report says this explicitly in relation to change and societal issues. Questions about layoffs, hybrid work, climate stance or public values cannot be handled well in silos. Employees interpret silence, inconsistency and vague positioning as signals in themselves.
Finally, the report implies a more sober lesson: trust cannot be built by communication alone if the organisation’s conduct contradicts the message. Since trust is strongly tied to whether employees think the organisation acts in their interests, lives its values and genuinely listens, communication succeeds best when it reflects reality rather than attempts to mask it. In that sense, the report is not just a defence of internal communication. It is also a challenge to leadership behaviour.