How to build a trusted workplace that lasts

See how a trusted workplace connects people, compliance and data to strengthen business decisions with insights from NAVEX.

Creating a trusted workplace starts with people

Company culture isn’t experienced through marketing materials or HR newsletters – it’s experienced in everyday moments. People see company culture in how clearly expectations are communicated, how managers respond when something goes wrong, and whether raising a concern feels safe. Over time, those experiences shape employees’ trust in the organization and its leaders.

This puts the onus on employers to make doing the right thing straightforward and simple. Your employees should be able to find guidance they need, when they need it. They should understand what is expected of them, see that behavior reflected by leadership, and experience consistency in company values. 

“The organizations that keep their line of sight on the individual’s experience as a person are the organizations that are going to thrive,” said Cindy Raz, chief human resources officer at NAVEX.

In risk and compliance, processes work best when they support those moments without unnecessary complexity or arduous tasks. This human focus is central to risk and compliance – when training, policies, reporting and other processes feel seamless, they reinforce expectations and help to build confidence in how their organization operates.

“At the end of the day, NAVEX is helping people build better workplaces. We’re helping people experience life differently within their workplaces, and we’re equipping organizations and leaders with the tools and resources to achieve that,” Raz said.

A trusted workplace turns compliance data into usable intelligence

Beyond employee confidence, trust also impacts business performance. “The best businesses are the most trusted businesses,” said Arpan Sheth, chief executive officer at NAVEX.

This direct connection has been core to the NAVEX story since its founding more than 30 years ago. NAVEX began by helping organizations give employees a channel through which they can speak up and evolved to address a broader range of risk and compliance needs. Today, these activities are necessary to keep up with the proverbial “ever changing, increasingly complex” needs to conduct business in this environment.

Apart from keeping up with regulatory demands, organizations need data to understand their business with appropriate context. This is where risk and compliance benchmarking adds another layer of context. NAVEX analyzed 2.37 million reports from 4,052 organizations representing approximately 77 million employees for the 2026 Whistleblowing & Incident Management Benchmark Report. That scale of data helps organizations compare their own reporting patterns with broader benchmarks and look for potential risk signals across the business.

The other piece of the picture is regulatory intelligence – organizations operating across markets need to address multiple regulatory regimes at once. “Businesses need to understand their regulatory burden, but also to simplify it so they have freedom to operate,” said Erena Langley, regulatory solutions director at NAVEX. Understanding the regulatory burden, incorporating those requirements into standard operating procedures and involving compliance early allows the business to operate more smoothly and efficiently.

Data and AI can help strengthen an already trusted workplace

Information in isolation is useless. Connecting compliance information to other inputs across the business helps teams connect a larger story.

For example, reporting and analytics can reveal patterns across risk and compliance activities and give leaders greater context for decisions. Then, by layering in artificial intelligence, organizations can expand that potential by helping teams analyze information, identify connections and scale work that previously required significant manual effort.

And adoption is already growing: according to the NAVEX 2026 State of Risk & Compliance Report, 78% of risk and compliance teams were somewhat or very involved in organizational AI decision-making in 2026, compared with 65% in 2025.

However, human judgment is essential. AI must be the companion that helps people scale their expertise, not a replacement for it. This distinction is increasingly important as AI technologies are being released and adopted at a head-spinning rate.

Organizations seeking to create and maintain a trusted workplace have a few things in common, one of which is making ethics and compliance training and tasks non-negotiable and easy to access. Another is an embedded compliance program that operates as a standard operating procedure, not an afterthought. Ultimately, trust is built through the everyday experience of how an organization communicates, makes decisions, and acts when it matters.