Sept. 27, 2026 | TRUST Pt. 1

I see a lot of posts online describing HR as the “handmaidens of upper management,” part of a “surveillance state,” or similar.

Where does this narrative come from?

Obviously, employees have had experiences where they felt like HR burned them. In addition to being posted online, these stories become part of many organizations’ oral traditions, sometimes continuing on even when no one involved is still employed at the firm!

What would it take to get employees to trust HR?

Well, you’ll probably never convince a Reddit mob, but at your own organization, there’s only one possible answer, and it’s deceptively simple: you build trust by behaving in a trustworthy fashion.

Colloquially, we often describe trust as a binary (“I trust them” or “I don’t trust them”). But the truth is it’s a continuum.

Additionally, your level of trust in someone is continually updating based on each experience you have with them…

• When they do something slightly untrustworthy, your trust in them decreases a bit
• When they do something moderately trustworthy, your trust in them increases somewhat
• When they do something extremely untrustworthy, your trust in them plummets
• Et cetera

In this way, we continually update our trust in others based on evidence they provide that they should (or should not) be trusted. That evidence consists of statements but more so their behaviors.

Additionally, these updates are cumulative, meaning all previous interactions also feed into the current trust level, at least to some extent.

Based on this, the idea that you can immediately forgive someone or instantaneously choose to begin trusting them again, like flipping a switch, is a fantasy that only exists in fiction. (Actually, certain psychological conditions may enable this, but that’s not a good thing.)

So, back to the question: How do you get employees to trust HR?

Presumably, if they don’t trust HR, it’s because…

1. They’ve been burned (or at least that’s how they feel), and/or
2. They’ve heard stories of others getting burned, and they worry it’s going to happen to them.

Repairing that—especially if you don’t believe you did mistreat anyone in the first place—requires humility and patience.

I’ll get into more specifics next time…