Trust in Turbulence: The 2025 Trust Research Report

How Leaders Turn Disruption Into Competitive Advantage Report

Disruption isn’t the exception anymore, it’s the norm. The question isn’t if it will happen, but how your organization responds.

Our latest SparkEffect research reveals a surprising outcome: organizations that handle disruption very well actually earn higher employee trust than those that faced no disruption at all. We call this the trust dividend, and it directly fuels revenue, retention, and reputation.

“Trust isn’t a soft metric, it’s a structural competitive advantage. When organizations treat trust as strategy, they don’t just protect morale, they outperform.”
— Kim Bohr, President & COO, SparkEffect

Get your free copy now and equip your leaders with actionable frameworks to turn turbulence into momentum.

What’s Inside the 2025 Trust Report:

✅ The Trust Performance Index
Benchmark your organization across five trust domains: Strategic Clarity, Psychological Safety, Relational Continuity & Belonging, Technology & Systems Trust, and Fairness & Change Impact. 

✅ The Disruption Dividend
See why well-handled disruptions boost trust by 12% over baseline — and poorly handled ones slash it by 28%.

✅ Trust Elasticity Model
Learn how some organizations rebound 6.5× stronger after disruption while others fracture and fall behind.

✅ The Manager Trust Gap
Understand why employees place higher trust in local leaders — and why that trust is the most fragile under crisis pressure.

✅ The ROI of Trust
High-trust organizations report 97% confidence in financial performance compared to just 46% in low-trust organizations — a 51-point gap with bottom-line consequences.

Why Trust Is Now A Business Strategy

In the past two years, 71% of employees experienced major workplace disruption. Those moments either shattered trust or strengthened it.

Organizations that lead with clarity and care don’t just protect culture — they outperform peers who faced no disruption at all.