Can you trust your boss? Apparently more so in the US than in the UK and Asia. Research by consultants Watson Wyatt says 51% of US workers have trust and confidence in the job being done by senior management, compared with just 31% of UK workers.
A similar survey for Asia revealed that less than a third of workers in the region have "favourable impressions of the trust between senior management and employee". Andrew Cocks, European head of employee research at Watson Wyatt, says the figures can be explained by the greater efforts by US business leaders to communicate with their employees. "Following the corporate scandals of Enron and WorldCom, managers were forced to concentrate on rebuilding trust. Back then only 44% of US workers trusted their managers. There's more of an emphasis on open dialogue in the US," he says.
And the research points out that it might not just be a matter of "can you trust your senior managers?" but even "do you know who they are?" Cocks says in the UK, employees, particularly in the blue-collar sector, are less likely to know who senior management is or what they do.
