Interaction Associates is in the final stages of our annual workplace trust research, Building Trust in Business 2013. We will release this year's findings in early summer and we expect to show some interesting new trends at the intersection of trust, leadership, and collaboration.

It’s been an exhilarating couple of weeks at Interaction Associates, with several important validations of our work and the issues that we track in the world.

Listen to CEO Linda Stewart in conversation with Aubrey Weite of Human Capital Institute. Linda talks about employee involvement and why employee engagement is not enough.

To download your free copy of the 2012 Building Trust in Business Research Report and a free Trust Toolkit, please visit this link.

Our annual research, Building Trust in Business 2012, yielded an important finding about how high-performing companies are focused increasingly on employee and customer relationships as a key component for driving business results.

In this brief podcast, Chief Innovation Officer Andy Atkins offers important insights into the connection between focusing on relationship and building trust -- especially for retaining key employees and valuable customers in tough times.

What is the state of Trust in Business this year?

Since 2009, Interaction Associates has surveyed companies to discover how they are faring in the areas of trust, leadership, and collaboration. In 2012, our Building Trust in Business research study found that overall trust levels have not recovered from the hit they took in 2009. With the economy struggling, it's important to understand what top-performing companies are doing to drive revenues and grow, despite the grim economic headlines.

CEO Linda Stewart and CIO Andy Atkins sat down with our partner Aubrey Wiete, a Senior Analyst at the Human Capital Institute (HCI) to discuss the findings of the 2012 Building Trust in Business Report. (You can download the full report here.)

While a key takeaway is that while trust is at very low levels across many businesses, there is some good news, too. Some high-performing companies are leveraging trust-building leadership practices and collaborative acumen to achieve financial success.

Our annual survey of trust and leadership, Building Trust in Business, will be released early next month, and we’ll have a lot to say about the findings then – but I wanted to highlight some top-level findings briefly.

Do employees at your company speak up and regularly engage in dialog that helps to shape strong results? And when they do, does the dialog go beyond merely ratifying what you as the leader have shared?

If the answers are no, you might be experiencing employee silence -- where employees withhold information because they perceive a threat. In driving greater employee involvement and shared responsibility for business results, leaders need to be on the lookout for when and why employees stay silent.

Our 2011 Building Trust in Business research survey measures critical indicators for trust, leadership, and collaboration — pointing to how high-performing companies achieve key business results by emphasizing all three.

The 2011 survey of nearly 200 business leaders represents the third year that Interaction Associates has explored the formula for success at high performing companies.