There is a wide gap between how much CEOs think their employees trust them and how much trust actually exists.
Nearly 90% of CEOs say they are confident their employees trust them, per Boston Consulting Group. Only 46% of employees actually do.
Inside the CEO Insomnia Index
The figures come from Boston Consulting Group's new CEO Insomnia Index, a survey built around the issues that keep chief executives up at night.
The index is designed to measure the pressures weighing on the corner office, from strategy and markets to the state of the workforce itself.
On the workforce front, the results suggest many CEOs are sleeping fine on a problem they may not realize they have.
Why the Gap Matters
A trust gap of this size is more than an awkward survey result. It points to a disconnect between leadership's view of the company and the experience of the people doing the work.
When executives overestimate trust, they can misread morale, underestimate turnover risk, and be caught off guard by everything from union drives to quiet quitting to sudden attrition in key roles.
Employees who do not trust leadership are also less likely to flag problems early, whether those problems are operational, financial, or ethical. For investors, that makes workforce trust a soft signal worth watching alongside the hard numbers in an earnings report.
Reading It as an Investor Signal
This is a survey story, not an earnings story, so the market read should be measured.
There is no single stock that trades on CEO trust. Instead, the index is best used as background context for large-cap leadership and governance more broadly, the kinds of names that dominate the S&P 500 and the index funds most investors own.
Governance still matters at the individual-name level. Companies that cycle through executives, face public workforce disputes, or report deteriorating employee sentiment can see that show up in options markets as elevated put buying or wider expected moves around earnings. Traders who track unusual flow can spot when institutional money starts pricing in management risk at a specific company.
For most investors, the takeaway is simpler. A leadership team that misjudges its own credibility by more than 40 points is a reminder to look beyond the earnings call script and check what employees, customers, and former executives are saying.
The Bottom Line
CEOs are confident their people trust them. The people, on balance, are not so sure. Closing that gap is a management problem, but for investors it is also a useful reminder that the view from the top of a company is not always the view from inside it.
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