We are witnessing the collapse of trust between employees and employers
Why employees are pulling back from the emotional contract of work
There’s something in the air recently, and it feels like it’s gathering steam. I think we’re witnessing the real-time collapse of the decades-long emotional contract between corporate employees and their employers. You might even call it the end of trust.
While I’m more than five years out of corporate life, I still speak to a lot of people who are immersed in that world and there are a few themes that are growing clearer with each passing day. The main one is that there seems to be a growing disconnect between leadership messaging and how people are experiencing work.
The mood right now feels different from anything I’ve ever really seen before. It feels super cynical and jaded, and I’m not really sure if companies know how to fix it.
To be frank, from what I can gather, a lot of companies don’t even know they have a problem yet, let alone the will to fix it.
The psychological contract is breaking down
Right now we’ve got a few factors converging at once that are contributing to this mood:
Burnout remains widespread. Around three-quarters of employees report experiencing it.
Trust in leadership continues to fall. According to recent Gartner research, only 48% of employees trust their senior leaders.
One recent study found around a third of employees admitted they were actively resisting or sabotaging AI initiatives inside their organisations, because they don’t trust what’s coming next. And honestly, with what companies like Meta are doing right now, who could blame them?
This is not simply resistance to a new technology. It reflects a broader breakdown in workplace trust.
For decades, work operated on an unspoken emotional agreement between employees and employers.
Employees gave extra effort, emotional energy and loyalty. They stayed late when needed, took on additional responsibilities above and beyond their job description when asked. Many were true believers in company culture and direction. In return, they expected some version of stability, career progression, belonging or meaning.
The arrangement was never perfect. Corporate life has always involved trade-offs and power imbalances. Still, many people believed the exchange was fundamentally fair -or fair enough not to disrupt the status quo too heavily.
That belief has started to fracture in recent times. Companies that used to call their staff “family” have resorted to layoffs over Zoom. And right now we’re hearing more and more companies talk about their new “AI first” cultures, after years of promoting their “people first” approach on LinkedIn.
The about-face - and dare I say it, the hypocrisy - is truly astounding.
People notice that disconnect, and once they do, it changes how they engage with work.
Employees are reassessing the deal
Many employees are no longer emotionally investing in organisations the way they once did. They’re pulling back to protect themselves, and approaching work more cautiously and transactionally.
In practice, that looks like doing the job and getting paid, then going home. Keep your boundaries where you can.
Many employees are no longer willing to provide unlimited discretionary effort simply because the company asks for it. If overtime becomes routine, they expect to be compensated. If organisations demand loyalty while offering less stability in return, employees can (and should) reassess the arrangement accordingly.
The biggest disconnect comes when leadership teams frame this as disengagement, poor attitude or even laziness. You know the ones - they complain about not being able to find good people, after years of treating their people worse than strangers.
That interpretation is not just tone-deaf, it completely misses the point. What many organisations are seeing is employees undertaking a highly rational recalibration of risk and reward, even if they don’t realise they’re doing it.
Employees watched repeated rounds of layoffs affect high performers and long-tenured staff alike. They saw companies praise resilience while laying people off in record numbers. They watched organisations celebrate flexibility before introducing aggressive return-to-office mandates. Now many are being told AI will reshape their roles, while leadership struggles to clearly explain what that means for their future.
Under those conditions, emotional withdrawal becomes a form of self-protection.
Why AI resistance is really about trust
That context also explains why AI adoption is becoming far more complicated inside organisations than many executives expected.
Leaders often assume employees resist AI because they fear change or lack technical understanding. In reality, many employees simply don’t trust leadership to deploy AI in ways that genuinely benefit workers. Resistance is predictable if employees believe productivity gains will primarily lead to workforce reductions, cost-cutting or unrealistic performance expectations.
Trust shapes adoption. Without it, even strong technical initiatives will inevitably fail.
Culture can’t survive on messaging alone
The long-term risk for organisations is the gradual loss of the discretionary effort companies have relied on for decades to be profitable or successful.
Many corporate cultures depend on employees giving more than the formal employment contract technically requires. The unspoken assumption has always been that strong culture, purpose and values would sustain that investment.
That only works while people believe the relationship is reciprocal. Once trust disappears, culture starts to look performative rather than genuine.
Branded values can’t compensate for that loss. Neither can free lunches, wellbeing webinars or another internal campaign about purpose.
Rebuilding trust comes first
If companies want employees to contribute discretionary effort and engage meaningfully with the future of work, they need to rebuild trust and credibility first.
Right now, many employees are rejecting an arrangement that no longer feels mutually beneficial. And once trust is gone, it takes a lot of effort to get it back.