As corporate scandals go, it does not get much bigger. An internal investigation into leaks from the HP boardroom mushroomed into a legal action that revealed corporate spying on a series of directors, executives and journalists.

It all seems at odds with the long-standing HP Way, a corporate philosophy coined by the firm’s founders, David Packard and Bill Hewlett. In a famous anecdote, Hewlett visited an HP site and found a storeroom locked. He immediately went to the nearest hardware store, bought a bolt cutter, and returned to unlock the door. The HP Way was to trust employees, apparently.

The loss of confidence should not come as a surprise. A recent survey of 13,000 individuals conducted by employment research specialist Watson Wyatt Worldwide found that less than a third (31 per cent) of UK workers have trust and confidence in their business leaders.

Falling levels of trust in the workplace have serious consequences for business, says Ilene Gochman, the Watson Wyatt practice leader who conducted the survey. Gochman cites research showing that companies with high trust levels typically enjoy three times more shareholder return than companies with low trust levels.

‘Unless businesses can resolve this crisis of confidence, there is little hope of restoring or maintaining the trust and confidence of investors,’ she says.

As an IT leader, developing trust within your department and with non-IT colleagues is a vital part of the job, says Philip Graham, head of information management and technology at the Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre NHS Trust.

‘As an IT executive, you’re a conduit for all these different department heads and the board – they all expect you to deliver on their business plans, without necessarily knowing what else you have on your priority list,’ says Graham. ‘Without trust, that whole system collapses.’

Trust is absolutely essential for any ambitious IT executive, agrees Dave Aron, vice president of research at analyst Gartner. Aron says that many IT directors are what Gartner terms as classic IT leaders who simply deliver technology and build systems. However, most aspire to be a process leader, developing strategy and shaping the company’s future. ‘That only happens if they trust you,’ says Aron.

How do you know if you are a trusted executive or just the bloke who looks after the computers?

‘Ask yourself how early on you find out about changes in strategy,’ says Aron. ‘If you’re reading about something in the Wall Street Journal the day before a merger happens, then you’re not trusted,’ he says.

Ideally, a trusted executive will be in the boardroom and being asked for his input while new strategy is still being shaped.

If you are not trusted as a leader, warning signs might include higher staff turnover – particularly when previously high performing staff begin to leave.

The other indicator of a lack of trust is a marked increase in levels of office gossip. ‘If you start to hear multiple versions of a story from different sources, it indicates there is a lack of trust in the leadership, that people maybe do not believe what they are being told,’ says Sarah Burnett, a senior research analyst with Butler Group.

But does it matter if your colleagues and bosses do not trust you? Absolutely, says Paul Myers, a director of consulting firm Qedis. ‘If people don’t trust the organisation, virtually any measure of performance you pick will be affected,’ he says.

Organisations that lack trust typically experience lower morale, higher turnover, reduced worker productivity and higher levels of absence, says Myers.

In addition, organisations that lack trust and respect tend to be less innovative, adds Ian Taylor, a vice-president with Forrester Research. ‘When people don’t trust their leadership, they take fewer risks, they tend to want to cover their own backs,’ he says. ‘They don’t trust you to support them if they get into trouble.’

If you suspect a lack of trust in your organisation, or want to improve trust in the workplace, the experts agree that the key is understanding what is expected of you, and what you can expect in return.

The modern workplace often relies on a complex social agreement between employers and employees, according to Myers. As employees, we expect to receive clear guidelines from managers about our duties, and expect to be recognised and rewarded for performing those duties well. Our employers, meanwhile, expect us to perform our duties diligently and effectively in return for those rewards.

The quickest way to destroy trust in any workplace is to break that social contract in any way. ‘An employer might not provide clear guidelines or might change the goalposts without giving fair warning,’ says Myers. ‘As an employee, you might not fulfil your duties properly, or you might take too much time off sick.’

Burnett says the first step in improving organisational trust is to look at your own department. Do staff have a good understanding of what is expected of them and how their performance will be measured? Are the rewards for success and consequences of failure clear, fair and consistent?

‘People need to know where the boundaries are, even if you’re telling them something they might not want to hear,’ she says. ‘Particularly if you’re starting from a position where trust has been poor in the past, you should also expect it to take some time. It will be an uphill struggle at first.’

Clear communication does not mean sharing the contents of every corporate memo on the departmental intranet.

‘There is no need to tell everyone everything to be trustworthy,’ says Myers. ‘It’s more about having four or five direct reports who you will provide with relevant information as quickly and fully as possible, and who you trust to cascade the information for you.’

If staff feel that they know what is going on, they will feel more secure, adds Burnett. ‘Don’t start going into meetings with senior management with a really serious face, and then refuse to tell anyone anything about why you’re meeting,’ she advises.

Trust in the IT department is not just about what you say – it is also about what you do as a leader.

‘Build your reputation by setting a good example,’ says Burnett. ‘If you say that everyone needs to put in more effort, don’t be seen leaving the office early on a Friday.’

Building trust with your team is also about them knowing you’ll be looking out for them, says Graham. ‘My team know that when I go into a meeting, I am looking to protect them from the unexpected,’ he says. ‘If they know you’re on their side, then when things don’t go your way, they’re a lot more prepared to accept your apology, view it as unfortunate and move on.’

Having a team that trusts you is not just a good thing for your own piece of mind – a well motivated, trusting workforce will almost certainly outperform a department that is riddled with politics and doubts, says Burnett – and in turn this helps your bosses to trust that you are performing well as an IT director.

‘If you have a good relationship with your team, they perform better and those outcomes are what you will be judged on by your own managers,’ she says.

Having the trust of your team is pointless unless you can also gain the trust of your own bosses – whether that is the chief finance officer, the chief executive or the entire board of directors. Gaining this level of trust can be more complicated because people will judge you based on what you do, what you say and what other people might say about you.

The first step in gaining the trust of a business leader is to learn to speak his language, advises Myers.

‘If you go into a boardroom talking geek-speak and using lots of jargon, people will suspect that you are hiding something,’ he says. ‘It’s far better to use open, transparent language that everyone will understand, and which makes it easier for them to trust what you’re saying.’

The basic rules of consistency and openness apply just as much outside the IT department as inside. When dealing with colleagues from other parts of the business, it is important to treat everyone equally, says Graham. Being seen to have a favourable relationship with human resources over finance is a big no-no, so Graham has a policy of sticking rigidly to policy when dealing with requests from business departments. This way, he cannot be accused of helping out the finance department when marketing was in trouble.

‘It’s difficult sometimes because people will always tell you they need something by tomorrow morning or all hell will break loose,’ says Graham. ‘By sticking to policy, they know that they’re being prioritised by the board, not by me. It can be really difficult, but I think it’s the only way to be seen as consistent and trustworthy.’

Do not make the mistake of only telling the board what you think they want to hear, he adds. ‘I am happy to tell people that their big problem is somewhere near the bottom of my list of priorities if that is the case,’ he says.

‘Because then you can talk about what they can do themselves, what staff time they might need to commit to get things to happen faster. It’s about not just letting people pass problems onto IT and expecting us to solve them.’

Another tip is to consider doing a little PR on your own behalf. ‘Ultimately, you’re being judged on what you do, but the business doesn’t always see that,’ says Forrester’s Taylor. ‘Sometimes it’s necessary to do a little promotion – not bragging – just to make sure people have taken note of what a technology project has delivered.’

One of the best ways to gain the trust of the board is to always deliver projects on time and on budget – but in IT that’s often not the case, adds Taylor. So it is important to develop tactics for keeping your bosses’ trust when things seem to be going wrong.

‘It’s about being open, not pretending things are fine when they’re not, and taking responsibility,’ he says. ‘So when there’s a problem you must be proactive and tell you boss what’s happened, who is fixing it and when you expect it to be resolved.’

Many chief executives do realise that mistakes happen – in IT just as in other parts of the business.

‘My view is that if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough,’ says Nick Bolton, chief executive of OMG, an Oxford-based manufacturer of equipment for the film industry. ‘As a business we get things wrong. We recently went to a trade show and the display stand was too shiny – marketing made a mistake. Sometimes sales people lose deals. And sometimes servers break down.’

Bolton says the key to not losing trust when things go wrong is immediate communication. ‘I’d expect the IT director to tell me what’s happened so we can talk about how the problem was fixed and what is being done to prevent it happening again,’ he says. ‘The only issue for me is if the IT director won’t admit to failures or problems, if they’re trying to hide or disguise it.’

Graham does not believe that IT problems need affect relationships with colleagues. ‘You have to be prepared to apologise when you’ve got things wrong,’ he says.

While many IT directors have successfully created trust in their own company, far fewer have successfully applied this to third parties, says Taylor. ‘It’s not easy to do, particularly if trust isn’t built-in from day one.’

It is important to recognise that trust is more important in some supplier relationships than others, says Gartner’s Aron. If a company supplies you with 1,000 mobile phones as part of a one-off contract, then trust is secondary to g etting the best possible deal. But where a company is going to be providing a product or service more closely integrated with your own business – such as a long-term outsourced helpdesk – then trust becomes paramount.

‘The most important thing is to look for ways to make the relationship profitable for both parties,’ he says.