Trust enablement just became the CHRO's Job
What the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Means for the Workplace
For years, HR leaders have treated "trust" as a nice-to-have, a cultural aspiration somewhere on the engagement survey. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer suggests that's no longer optional. It's now a core function of the C-suite, and increasingly, it's landing squarely on the CHRO's desk.
The world is retreating inward
Edelman's 26th annual survey of nearly 34,000 people across 28 countries found that trust has entered a new and more corrosive phase. After years of fear, polarization, and grievance, 2026 marks the arrival of what Edelman calls “insularity”.
7 in 10 respondents say they're unwilling or hesitant to trust someone who holds different values, takes a different approach to social issues, comes from a different background, or relies on different information sources.
That number climbs even higher in some developed markets: 90% in Japan and 81% in Germany and sits close to the global average in the U.S. at 70%. This isn't an abstract societal trend. It is walking through your office and factory doors every day.
Why it's happening, and why it's an HR problem
Edelman points to four forces driving insularity, and all show up directly in the employee experience.
Economic anxiety.
Two-thirds of employees worry that trade policy and tariffs will hurt their employer, and a large share of low- and middle-income respondents believe AI will leave them behind rather than help them get ahead.
Collapsing optimism.
Only 32% of people globally believe the next generation will be better off, a number in free fall in markets like France, Germany, Canada, and the U.S.
Eroding institutional trust
Split sharply along income lines, low-income respondents see institutions as, on average, 18 points less competent and 15 points less ethical than high-income respondents do.
An information crisis
Most respondents indicated worries on misinformation, and few actively seek out perspectives that differ from their own.
The workplace consequence is concrete and measurable. Forty-two percent of employees say they'd rather switch departments than report to a manager with very different values, and 34% say they'd reduce their effort on a project led by someone with opposing beliefs. That's not abstract "culture fit" talk. It shows up as disengagement, attrition risk, and productivity loss with a number attached.
The good news: employers are the last trusted institution standing
Here's the pivot point for CHROs. Amid all this retreat, one relationship has actually strengthened: the one between employees and their employer. "My employer" is now the most trusted institution in people's lives, at 78% trust among employees: 14 points ahead of business generally and 25 points ahead of government.
Critically, this holds true regardless of where someone sits on the insularity spectrum: employees with both insular (74%) and open (84%) mindsets expect their employer to actively broker trust between distrustful groups.
Edelman's language for this is blunt: employers are expected to become “trust brokers”. And whilst the CEO is expected to lead this work (73%), direct supervisors, co-workers, and other familiar, local voices are also expected to play a role in bridging divides. That puts the manager population (the layer that HR usually spends so much time developing), at the center of the trust-building infrastructure. This is a talent-development and leadership-capability challenge as much as it's a communications issue.
What "trust brokering" actually looks like
The Barometer doesn't leave this as a vague call to action. It names specific, testable behaviors that employees say builds trust:
Consulting people with different values and backgrounds when making decisions (75% say this works)
Constructively engaging with employees who criticize the company, rather than sidelining them (74%)
Meanwhile, there's a real credibility gap to close: 73% of people believe CEOs are obligated to facilitate trust-building, but only 44% think they're actually doing it well, leaving a 29-point execution gap. That gap is where CHROs earn their keep: translating a CEO mandate into manager behaviors, decision processes, and feedback loops that employees actually notice.
4 implications for CHRO strategy
Build "trust brokering" into manager capability, not just values statements.
If 42% of employees will change departments to avoid a manager with different values, manager trust-building skill becomes a retention lever. Train managers explicitly on consulting across difference and engaging critics constructively - the two behaviors Edelman's data ties directly to trust outcomes.
Treat the mass-class divide as an internal equity issue.
The trust gap between high and low income respondents has more than doubled since 2012, reaching 15 points globally and as high as 29 points in the U.S. Pay transparency, career pathing, and how AI-driven change is communicated to frontline vs. leadership populations will all be read through this lens, whether HR intends it or not.
Get ahead of AI anxiety with substance, not slogans.
With over half of low-income employees expecting to be left behind by generative AI, vague "AI will augment, not replace" messaging won't hold. CHROs need concrete reskilling commitments and honest workforce-impact communication - the kind of specificity that Edelman's "competence and ethics" framing rewards.
Give employees practice in engaging across difference.
Trust grows when people feel their differences are acknowledged rather than erased or forced into agreement. Structured opportunities for cross-functional, cross-background collaboration (not mandatory unity offsites), are what the data actually supports.
The opportunity for HR to add value
For the first time in the Barometer's history, the employer relationship isn't just resilient against a backdrop of institutional collapse - it's the load-bearing wall. That's an enormous opportunity for HR leaders who've spent years trying to prove the function's strategic weight. But it's also exposure: if trust-brokering expectations aren't met, the fallback isn't neutral disengagement, it's active distrust, in an environment where employees increasingly reward or punish leaders for how they handle exactly this.
About the Author
Tracey Thompson is well regarded within the industry for her ability to source and engage high performance HR talent. Over many years she has built a well deserved reputation for her uncanny ability to access proverbial “purple squirrel” HR specialists and as a result, is looked to as a global sourcing subject matter expert.