What the report tells us about internal comms.
Imagine you’re in a town hall meeting, but everyone checks out when the exec is answering questions. Not because they’re not interested in the answer, but because trust is weak.
According to the 2026 edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer, 75% of respondents said that CEOs are obligated to help bridge trust divides — but just 44% actually do it well. That 29-point gap is notable because it’s a leadership credibility problem playing out inside the workplace.
The Trust Barometer also reported that 78% of respondents said they trusted their employer to do the right thing, the highest of any entity in the study. In addition, 81% of respondents said that they felt their employer was responsible for bridging divides.
These numbers create both pressures and opportunities for internal communicators. Employees clearly differentiate between “the employer” as an institution and CEOs as individuals in the report. 78% trust their employer and 81% expect it to bridge divides within the company, yet there’s a 29-point credibility gap when it comes to CEOs doing that work effectively. That gap does more than just show up on paper. It plays out in town halls, Q&As and leadership updates where employees are evaluating not just what is said, but whether leaders appear willing and able to engage across differences.
For internal comms teams, this means the mandate goes beyond message clarity. The function must help close the credibility gap by making bridge-building a visible activity.
Trust grows through more than just messaging
One of the major takeaways from this year’s edition of the Edelman report was that trust was growing more insular. The Trust Barometer reported that just 22% of respondents said that they currently trust someone meaningfully different from them. Of the trusting individuals surveyed, their trust is driven by:
- Openness about their differences: 49%
- Transparency about their differences: 46%
For comms pros, the data shows trust among employees isn’t necessarily going to grow because everyone got the same memo or sat through the same town hall meeting together. Announcing trust into existence isn’t a thing.
But that doesn’t mean comms pros help reinforce trust in a more insular environment. Spotlighting cross-functional collaboration and teams that worked through constructive disagreement can help break down insularity and show employee audiences that both the organization itself and colleagues on the job are worthy of trust. Trust shines through when it’s experienced and modeled — and messaging is a way to help that happen, but not a catch-all solution on its own.
The report also contained a section on how employees view trust brokering, which included several notable datasets.
- 82% of employees believe that their organizations should promote a shared sense of culture to build trust.
- 81% of employees feel that creating teams that have people with different values can build trust.
- 80% of employees reported that constructive dialogue training can promote trust. This is notable because it shows that investing in communication training for managers can help build bridges in a real way. If that’s an offering at an organization, internal comms needs to promote it.
Framing trust brokering as a productivity issue
When there’s a lack of trust in an organization, the problem is much more than a cultural one — it can derail productivity. The Trust Barometer reported that:
- 42% of employees would put in less effort at work if their leader had different political beliefs from them.
- 34% of employees would rather switch departments than report to a manager with different beliefs from theirs.
The role of the internal communicator isn’t to smooth over differences or take sides — it’s to normalize collaboration and show that disagreement doesn’t have to derail performance. In an era of insularity, internal communications isn’t just shaping narrative. It’s shaping whether collaboration survives differences at all.
Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.
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