🎧 Podcast: The Great Place To Work Effect

[James]

Hello, and welcome to Great Talks, the series where we explore what great workplace culture really looks like and how you can achieve it. I'm James Bufton, List and and Organisational Trends Manager at Great Place to Work UK, and I'll be your host.

Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture. For decades we've partnered with organisations to measure trust, understand the employee experience, and use data-driven insights to help leaders turn culture into a genuine business advantage. In today's episode, we're exploring a simple but powerful idea. When organisations intentionally build a high-trust workplace, they don't just create better experiences for people, they also unlock stronger business results.

Simply put, when great leaders build trust, this translates into the experience that shapes the culture that drives performance. This is what we call the Great Place to Work Effect.

Today, I'm joined by Principal Consultant Luciana Barchet and Senior Insights Manager Abi Animwa. Together, we'll demystify the effect: what it really is, why it matters more than ever, and how leaders can use trust, culture, and data to drive performance in a meaningful and sustainable way.

So whether you're a leader, a people professional, or simply curious about how great workplaces create great results, let's dive in.

As we all know, we're here to talk about the Great Place to Work Effect, but before we jump into this, I think we should start by discussing the foundation for all great cultures, which is trust. Luciana, if you don't mind starting off, could you just tell us a bit about how we at Great Place to Work define trust and what this means within the workplace?

[Luciana]

If you think about the best and worst jobs you ever had, the experience you had there probably came down to who you worked with, not just what you were doing or the role or job title you had there. And I think we can all relate to that, right? A supportive manager, great colleagues, that sense of being valued versus the opposite, a toxic environment where trust just isn't there.

And that's true outside of work too. In our personal lives, the foundation of every relationship, whether with family, friends, partner, even when you have three kids like Abi, for example, is trust. So, when it's broken, everything feels harder and it's hard to rebuild it.

So, if we bring this back into the workplace, those relationships with our leaders, our teams, they are really the glue that holds our working lives together. So here at Great Place to Work, we define a great workplace based on three key elements, trust, pride, and camaraderie. So, a great place to work is somewhere people trust the people they work for, they feel proud of the work they do and the company they work for, and they genuinely enjoy the people they work with.

[Abi]

And Luciana, actually, the wider world is experiencing a lack of trust. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, it revealed that trust in government and media continues to decline. But actually, inside organisations, trust is becoming more important.

So, in the study, trust in CEOs sits at around 66%, trust in co-workers has also risen, and 42% of employees would change teams if their manager's values don't match their own. People are looking to their employers and their managers as a source of trust today. And it's so important because of the effects of it.

It's better for people and better for business. It's the ground on which all parties win, because not only are people happier because there's the trust with their leaders, colleagues and the company as a whole, but also as we'll get into it later on, it shows up in performance and into company pockets.

[Luciana]

Such powerful data, Abi, and it really reinforces something we are seeing everywhere. In a world that feels increasingly complex, people are turning to their employers for stability and fairness. So the question becomes, can organisations treat their people better than society treats them?

Because trust at work isn't something soft or fluffy on the side of the business. It's the quality of every interaction people have with their manager, with their colleagues, and whether they feel safe, respected and treated fairly. And that's again, that's the foundation everything else is built on.

So trust is certainly not a soft measure. In fact, as we will explore when we get into the Great Place To Work Effect model in a moment, trust is actually the starting point of how culture is created and how performance is delivered.

And, you know, and I think more than ever, trust has almost become that, you know, a new social contract between employees and their organisations. People want to work in a place where they can trust their leaders, they can trust their CEO, as you mentioned, trust the decisions being made and trust that they will be treated fairly. And that's what really holds workplaces together, that foundation.

[James]

I think this is what makes trust so interesting, because it's not just a matter of what employees want. It's also a question about what organisations need in order to thrive, in order to build those successful cultures.

But also seeing those statistics means that trust is something tangible. It's something that can be measured. It's something that we can gain those insights in. But I think for a lot of leaders and a lot of organisations, it can be quite unclear to measure something such as trust, because as you both mentioned, it is quite broad in terms of how we can measure and how it impacts so many different facets of an organisation's culture.

So Luciana, just to kind of position towards you, how can organisations measure trust? How does trust form part of the Great Place to Work Effect?

[Luciana]

At Great Place to Work, we have been measuring organisational culture and the employee experience for over 30 years now. And just to have an idea, last year alone, we surveyed globally more than 20 million employees across 21,000 companies, 170 countries and nearly 100 languages, if I'm not mistaken. So we have the most robust global data set across culture and employee experience.

And when we talk about trust, we are not talking about a vague concept. We're talking about something measurable, consistent and grounded in global data set. So our survey focuses on 60 core statements, which we call the key ingredients for that recipe of a great place to work.

So here we're talking about leadership, impact, pride, collaboration, innovation, wellbeing, fairness, development and so much more. We benchmark organisations against the best workplaces globally, but we also look within the organisation: where are the strengths? Where are the gaps? Where are the variances? Because it's not just about comparing results against that external benchmark to bring that external validation. It's about understanding the internal patterns of experience across the teams, functions, location and core demographic groups.

But there's one more really important point when we're talking about measuring trust and levels of trust across organisations. That experience has to be true for everyone, no matter who they are, what they do or where they sit in the organisation. That's what we call the for all element of our model.

In simple terms, if a company is great, it needs to be great for everyone, for all, not just on average. And that's ultimately how great places to work for all maximise human potential.

[Abi]

That's so interesting because I just feel like the whole for all element of the analysis that we have is a game changer. It's not whether 80% of people are having a great experience, it's whether every group is consistently having a great experience. So I guess when even one group lags behind, it can be the difference between a resilient, innovative and agile culture, and one that fully benefits from diverse perspectives, experiences and ways of thinking.

[Luciana]

Exactly, Abi, and you know, we as consultants, we analyse culture every day, we analyse results every day. And if I were to summarise probably the biggest trends we come across, there are probably three that come up again and again.

First, or number one, it's rarely the grand strategies that make the biggest difference. It's the basics done well, and done consistently.

Second, I would say the patterns matter more than the averages, which is that for all element that we just mentioned about. It's those internal variances that really tells us the story, whether one specific group is consistently having a more positive experience in comparison to another group.

And third, middle managers and frontline managers really are the squeezed middle, they hold the culture together. And that's why leadership is so important in building that foundation of trust that will shape to a greater experience and culture that drives business performance. The Great Place to Work effect starts with leaders, they play such a crucial part in shaping the employee experience.

It always starts with leaders and how they lead. We have identified nine high trust leadership behaviours, like listening, inspiring, development and more. And those behaviours, they shape the experience.

So over time, those consistent experiences, they scale into culture, things like collaboration, innovation, agility, belonging, and then that culture shows up in hard business metrics, profitability, efficiency, customer satisfaction, social impact, and the ability to attract and retain great talent. So in simple words, if you put it all together, leaders shape experience, experience shapes culture, culture drives performance. That's the Great Place To Work Effect.

[James]

I think this is great because now we have an understanding that trust is important, but how to build that high trust culture all comes down to those leaders. And as you mentioned before, it's not those grand strategies, it's the basics. It's about understanding initially those leadership behaviours that help to create that experience.

But I think it can be difficult for leaders initially just to understand the best ways that they can go about instilling this within an organisation and the culture itself through these behaviours. Abi, you mentioned earlier about your experiences in terms of reading hundreds of different Culture Audits and seeing best practice from a range of different organisations across sizes and industries, and seeing how the best of the best are able to instil these behaviours from their leaders, which then drives that experience. So can you share some best practice examples that you've seen around leadership behaviours that help to build those high trust cultures?

[Abi]

Yeah, so James, I think a key one I've seen in high trust organisations is listening. And I would actually argue it's the most important leadership behaviour of them all, because if you don't truly listen, it's very hard to model any of the other leadership behaviours Luciana has just mentioned. Interestingly, our Great Place To Work survey has become a key part of the listening strategy for many organisations, giving leaders a structured way to hear what employees are really experiencing.

And I was reading a Culture Audit recently from one organisation, and as part of leaders listening, they have “not-so-undercover boss sessions”. That brings senior leaders directly into open, honest conversations with employees, creating a space for real dialogue rather than scripted messaging. Employees are invited to share their challenges, their ideas directly with leaders, and they listen. And they also get to respond and engage in a transparent setting. And I think by making leadership visible, approachable and human, this practice strengthens trust because it improves that communication and helps bridge the gap between senior leadership and the wider organisation.

When it comes to those challenging questions with listening, another company, after their live question and answer sessions or Mentimeter sessions in their all-staff, they publish “spheres of influence” summaries to let employees know about which issues the organisation can directly control, where they can only have influence on the outcomes, and what sits completely outside of their remit.

And again, that openness in sharing, but also with this practice being able to provide the context following unanswered themes, this practice again builds that trust, but also accountability and constructive dialogue without defensiveness.

[Luciana]

I think what you have just described, Abi, is exactly why leadership behaviours, they sit at the heart of this model. When we analyse client data, we look at the experience across managerial level as well. And this is one of the core demographics that we have at Great Place to Work.

We look at how consistent is the experience between the executive team, mid-level, frontline managers, and the employees. And quite often, we see the executive team having an overall much more positive experience than the rest. And this is why this is so important to have this senior leadership visibility, communicating, engaging, especially with mid-level and frontline managers who are so crucial in cascading that strategy to the next level down.

So everything leaders do, or don't do, becomes part of the culture. The way they listen, how they communicate, how they develop people, these daily interactions are what builds or erodes trust. And this is why I think listening is so important to improve levels of trust across organisations.

[James]

What I liked about these examples is that it's all about that one leadership behaviour when it comes to listening, but there's so much variety in ways that leaders can listen. It's not just thinking about having a survey that employees can fill out once a year. It's trying to take meaningful points of contact with employees at different stages to try and consistently show that behaviour.

And I think this also has another meaning to it in the sense that leaders need to demonstrate these behaviours, but there needs to be those structures and those processes in place for leaders to actively engage in those behaviours and to make sure that they are able to instil that within the organisation and lead by example.

But this is great because now we have an understanding of those leadership behaviours, but it'd be really good to kind of go and take this to the next part of the effect. So let's say, for example, now that leaders have built trust within the workplace, how does that scale into culture?

[Luciana]

This is where it gets really interesting, because once you've built trust and the culture starts to shift, the impact on performance is immediate. When trust is high, you remove friction, people collaborate faster, solve problems quicker, they will focus their energy on the work rather than navigating uncertainty or protecting themselves. When trust is low, everything else slows down.

When trust is high, everything accelerates. Simple like that.

[Abi]

And in high trust organisations, when we compare them to the average workplace in terms of the culture markers, we see that employees are over 3.6 times more likely to be more collaborative and work together well. They report high levels of improved wellbeing and a sense of belonging. High trust companies experience a boost in innovation and employees feeling more open to share ideas.

And finally, openness to development opportunities and upskilling increases by 165%. So really, cultivating a culture, a high trust culture, really does bring results.

[James]

Of those statistics, I think it's such a clear way to show that those high trust cultures that leadership can build through those behaviours can actually have a really strong benefit for employees in a range of different areas. If you're thinking beyond collaboration, but also that sense of wellbeing that you mentioned, but then also the ability to innovate. We can see that wide spanning impact that has huge benefits for people who are working in those organisations.

But the benefits aren't just for employees. The benefits can also be for the business from having those high trust cultures. And I think it'd be really good to kind of hear a little bit more about what that actually looks like.

So now that we've talked about trust fuelling culture, where does culture meet performance and how does it drive performance in the workplace day to day?

[Luciana]

Thank you, James. I think what Abi just described by sharing that data set, as I mentioned, we serve more than 20 million people per year and we do have that hard business matrix to prove that trust really drives business performance. I think that it really shows how trust anchors the whole system, because once trust starts shaping culture through collaboration, agility, innovation, as Abi just shared with us, and that sense of shared ownership as well, it becomes impossible to separate culture from performance.

And trust isn't just good for people, it's good for business. And organisations don't have the luxury anymore of treating those as separate goals. We have shifted from “let's create a great place to work” to “let's create a great place to work so that performance improves” and the cultural shifts you've highlighted, agility, innovation, that discretionary effort, they always start with leadership behaviours in those micro moments of interaction.

That's where the ripple effect begins. Leaders shape the experience, that experience shapes the culture, and that culture drives the performance outcomes that any organisation would like to see.

[Abi]

That's right, Luciana. And, you know, in today's climate, many organisations are under pressure to do more with less, to stay productive, to be more profitable, you know, have that social impact. In the UK right now, productivity is below the European average, where in the data we've seen that the levels of output per hour is not translating into high productivity.

But what I've seen in high trust organisations is that they've been able to leverage the strengths of their people because of the high trust culture that has been cultivated. So as I mentioned before, people are more innovative and so on, into operational advantages that drives performance outcomes like productivity, efficiency, retention and market resilience. So here's a picture of how it works.

When you have high trust culture, people are more willing to give more of themselves to their work, not by working longer hours, but by bringing greater focus, energy and commitment, which is what ultimately leads to stronger productivity and performance. But how can we know that it actually makes a difference? Okay, so when it comes to productivity and efficiency, for example, one of the clearest metrics leaders should be looking at is the amount of revenue they are getting per employee.

Across our best workplaces, we consistently see significantly higher revenue per employee. In the UK, it's around 6.25 times higher compared to the national average.

[Luciana]

I think that tells us something really important, again, with all the data that you are providing to us, Abi. When people trust their leaders and the organisation, work gets done more efficiently and at a higher level of quality. This is the discretionary effort that you mentioned.

And when we look at our internal indices from our survey, there is one specific one which is around engagement, our engagement index. And we look at levels of that discretionary effort that ultimately impacts productivity and organisational performance. So this is supported by high levels of trust.

And this is where people will put that additional effort to get the job done. And these are the hard business metrics that senior leaders care about. So whether you're looking at, let's say, for example, CEOs, what are the most important levers or measures for a CEO? They would most of the times be focused on revenue and headcount. You will have your CFOs focused on efficiency and productivity. You will have your CHROs focused on retention and performance.

And we can clearly show how the data and the Great Place to Work effect speaks directly to every part of the leadership table, especially from the revenue per employee that you just shared with us.

[Abi]

Yeah, that's completely true. And just another kind of performance outcome to look at is market resilience. So the CIPD has been very clear that employee agility is now essential, not optional, in order to respond effectively to ongoing uncertainty and change.

And in high trust workplaces, employees are far more able, so actually 2.5 times more likely from our data to be able to quickly adapt to change, whether that's shifts in strategy, new technology or changing customer outcomes. When trust is low, people hesitate. But when trust is high, organisations move faster because people feel empowered to act.

And finally, we also see that in our Certified organisations that are committed to creating high trust cultures, they experience lower attrition and greater retention than the typical workplace, even in tougher industries like retail and hospitality, where attrition is less by around 15% and 21% respectively, compared to the average. And so you see, that's why culture steeped in high trust is a measurable driver of business performance.

[Luciana]

If we go back to those leadership behaviours we mentioned earlier, like listening, inspiring, developing, you can really see the ripple effect in action. When leaders build trust through their everyday behaviour, employees feel safe to contribute more, teams collaborate more fluidly, and the organisation becomes more resilient, more adaptable. Those cultural shifts, they don't stay isolated, they flow directly into all that we have been mentioning now.

They flow directly into productivity, agility, retention, and overall business performance. It's a chain reaction, and it always starts with trust again.

[James]

I think the main takeaway from this is that ultimately this is a massive win-win situation for all parties who are involved in this. There are benefits for employees to have that sense of pride in the organisation and in wanting to contribute, but then the outcome of that is, as you mentioned Abi, the benefits to the business and actually how we can help the organisation to grow itself. And I think what you mentioned is correct, there is so much pressure at the moment on leaders within the UK trying to do more with less, and it is often really difficult to think about what organisations can do to try and drive performance and try and create these great cultures.

But it's as we mentioned before, it's bringing it back to the basics. Having those correct, consistent leadership behaviours that are instilled within the organisation does impact that experience, which drives the culture and ultimately drives the performance. And it's great to kind of see that those sort of changes through leadership can really have this wide-spanning impact for the organisation as a whole.

Ultimately we've gone through a lot of insights today and so much rich content that we've spoken about, and I think it'd be really good to bring it back to one specific piece of advice as leaders of what you would suggest for organisations who are on this journey. So if a leader listening could do one thing this week to build trust, what should it be?

[Abi]

I think listen to your people and learn from others, which also includes listening. Listening is definitely the first step to building a stronger place for your people and to building a stronger culture. The quietest conversations, when truly heard by leaders, can reshape an organisation's culture and lead to performance.

So I think that's my two pennies. I would really think our leaders should listen more.

[Luciana]

I think it's hard to pick one thing and, you know, just, I think just building on what Abi just mentioned around listening and to create a moment this week if you are a manager, just, you know, to genuinely listen to your people, just, you know, reinforcing what you just said, Abi. But not to solve, not to justify, not to jump in with an answer or try to fix things. It's just listen, because it's usually in those more personal moments, those quieter moments, easily overlooked conversations where the real truth lives, the things people don't put in emails or Teams channels, the things that we hesitate as, you know, managers or colleagues at work, the things that we hesitate to say in a Teams meeting, for example.

I think this is when a leader shows that they are truly hearing, if I could say, truly hearing someone without judgment, without an agenda for that conversation, make it more natural, more genuine, built around trust. And this is where we can build more psychological safety and, you know, and trust builds quickly when those walls come down, if I could say, and people start showing up differently to work in their attitude towards work. And that one simple moment repeated consistently, I think this is what changes the way a team feels.

This is what changes the way each one of us can feel about work and eventually how we can perform better, not working more, but being more efficient, more agile and impacting, you know, the business performance. Big cultural shifts always start with something small and listening, I think, is the smallest, most powerful place to begin building trust and make a real change starting this week to each one listening to us today.

[James]

Amazing. Thank you so much, Abi and Luciana, for joining me today. I've really enjoyed the discussion and I'm sure our listeners truly valued your insights.

As we wrap up today's conversation, one thing remains clear. Trust isn't just something that feels good at work, it is something that drives real, measurable results. And if you'd like to explore the impact that trust has on performance in more depth, we've brought it all together in the Great Place to Work Effect Report.

The report goes deeper into the data behind the Effect – with detailed insights, real world case studies, and evidence that shows how high trust cultures consistently outperform.

If today’s episode sparked questions about how trust shows up in your organisation – or what small changes could create a bigger ripple effect – the report is a great place to start. You can get your copy at greatplacetowork.co.uk.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Great Talks. Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you get your podcasts, and signed up to our newsletter so you get notified when our next episode is live, where we’ll continue exploring how great workplaces create great results – for people and for business.