Employees do not trust change, and leaders can see adoption lagging

Seventy-nine percent of employees have low trust in their organization's ability to change, according to an April 2025 Gartner survey of more than 2,850 employees. Gartner calls this "change trust," meaning trust in the organization's ability to change effectively. It is not general trust in the employer.

Leaders report a related problem. In a separate survey reported in July 2025, Gartner found that only 32 percent of mid-to-senior business leaders said the last change they led achieved healthy adoption by employees. Gartner defines healthy change adoption as employees acting on a change, on time, without undue stress or harm to performance and engagement.

The same Gartner release connects trust to how well change is governed. In an April 2025 Gartner survey of 141 HR leaders, organizations facing "ungovernable change" were 1.6 times less likely to have high change trust.

Older and narrower evidence points the same way. In a 2017 survey for the American Psychological Association, US workers going through organizational change were almost three times as likely as those with no change to distrust their employer, at 34 percent against 12 percent. Across all US workers in the same 2017 survey, not only those going through change, 29 percent believed management had a hidden agenda in promoting changes, and only 43 percent were confident that changes would have the desired effects.

How the research was done

Gartner's July 2025 release gives a sample of more than 2,850 employees for the trust survey but no sample size for the leader survey behind the 32 percent, and it does not disclose the country mix.

Gallup's evidence on trust comes from a different angle. Gallup reported in 2024 that among US employees who had experienced significant disruption, those who strongly agreed they trusted their organization's leadership were 4.5 times as likely to be engaged and 62 percent less likely to feel burned out. In the same 2024 Gallup study, disrupted employees who strongly agreed their leaders communicate effectively were 4.3 times as likely to be engaged and 65 percent less likely to feel frequently burned out. Both findings come from Gallup Panel web surveys of US employees conducted in the first three quarters of 2023, and Gallup does not say which of those surveys produced them.

The APA figures come from an online Harris Poll of 1,512 employed US adults, conducted from February 16 to March 8, 2017.

Adoption that is not defined before launch cannot be measured after it.

What it does not show

These studies measure different kinds of trust. Gartner's change trust concerns the organization's ability to change effectively. Gallup measured trust in leadership, and the APA survey measured distrust of the employer. They should not be merged into one claim about trust.

Gartner's 2025 figures of 79 percent and 32 percent come from different surveys of different people, and the 32 percent is leaders' own assessment of the last change they led. Together they describe a gap, but they cannot show that low trust caused weak adoption.

Gallup's 2024 results are correlations and relative measures, so they do not show that building trust would cut burnout by 62 percent. Trust and engagement may also share causes. The APA data are from 2017 and cover only the United States. They show associations, not causes.

Gartner also said in 2025 that routinizing change makes healthy adoption three times more likely. That is a prediction from Gartner's model, not an observed result.

What to do with it

Adoption that is not defined before launch cannot be measured after it. Gartner's definition gives leaders a usable test: whether people act on the change, on time, without undue stress or harm to performance and engagement.

• Write that test into the plan before launch, with a date for checking it and an owner for the result.
• Measure change trust on its own. Ask employees whether they trust the organization to carry out change well, and keep that question apart from engagement and general trust items.
• Test communication in teams under heavy change. Gallup's 2024 finding is a correlation, but a single survey item on whether leaders communicate effectively can show whether the pattern holds in your own organization.
• Keep one register of all planned changes, so someone can see when the load is becoming hard to govern. Gartner's 2025 finding on "ungovernable change" rests on 141 HR leaders, which makes it a signal to watch rather than a benchmark.