THE 2026 TRUST AND PAY REPORT

Employers don't know
where they stand.
Employees already
do.

Every year, we run the Pay Practices and Compensation Strategy Survey — a look at how organizations structure, manage, and communicate compensation. This year, one result stood out enough to change our research plans: when HR professionals were asked whether employees would agree pay is fair, confidence dropped sharply. So we went and asked the other side.

We fielded a new study, pairing employer and employee responses on the same questions — pay fairness, transparency, and trust. This report is the first time we've turned that side-by-side data into a narrative: what the gap between employer certainty and employee reality means, why it matters, and where the fastest lever for closing it is hiding in plain sight. It also lands at a specific moment: hiring, quitting, and firing have all settled into a multi-year low. That won't last — this report is about being ready before it turns.

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Two sides of the same survey, asked at the same time

1,051

Employer respondents

975

Employee respondents

Independent surveys, parallel questions

June 2026

Fielded via third-party research panel

What's Inside

Insights from the Trust
Edition survey

The uncertainty gap

44.6% of employers say they don't know whether they've gained or lost trust with employees this year — more than either 'yes' or 'no' alone. We checked that uncertainty against what employees report, and the ground is steadier than employers think.

The manager lever

Employees trust their direct manager as much as, or more than, their employer overall — and that advantage is largely intact. It's the most actionable, already-working lever for closing the org-level trust gap, and most companies aren't using it.

A clear path forward

Closing the gap isn't about a communications campaign. This report lays out five evidence-backed moves, in the order they matter most — starting with measuring trust directly instead of guessing at it.

The market won’t stay this quiet

Quits, hires, and layoffs have all settled into a multi-year low. This report looks at what to fix now — before the next hiring cycle turns “steady” into “someone else’s steady.”

THE 2026 TRUST AND PAY REPORT

The ground is
steadier than
employers think.

HR professionals report solid pay infrastructure and believe, on the whole, that their practices are fair. But ask them whether their organization has gained trust with employees this year, and confidence collapses — 44.6% simply don't know. That kind of uncertainty can read as a warning sign.

It isn't one. We checked it against what employees are actually reporting, and only 18.5% report low trust — a clear majority sit solidly in high trust. The real risk in this data isn't collapsing trust. It's employers navigating blind on a question their own employees have already answered.

What's inside:

The headline finding: employers are unsure, employees are more confident than feared
Who's most uncertain about trust
The manager relationship as the fastest, most underused lever for trust
Why the fairness data is better news than employers expect, and where the real gap still lives
Pay transparency as a spectrum, not a yes/no policy
Five sequenced recommendations for closing the gap
Why this moment — a historically quiet labor market — is the cheapest time to close these gaps

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