Five Key Steps for Restoring Trust in the Public Sector: A Framework for Leaders
Trust is the bedrock of an effective society, and in the public sector, it is a crucial indicator of a public agency’s performance. Yet, trust failures are common and can have a devastating impact, eroding public confidence and damaging the relationship between citizens and the institutions that serve them. So, when trust is broken, how can it be repaired?
This is a question we explored in our chapter, “Repairing Trust in Public Sector Agencies.” Based on a review of research on trust repair, we outline five core practices that leaders in public sector organisations should consider when aiming to restore faith and confidence after a transgression. This framework is designed to serve as a practical guide for navigating a complex and often politicized landscape, offering insights to help target unique challenges faced by public sector agencies.
What Makes Trust Repair So Hard in the Public Sector?
Before diving into the framework, it’s essential to understand why repairing trust in the public sector differs and often proves more challenging than in other sectors. While the fundamental principles of trust repair hold across the board, public agencies face unique dynamics that influence the process.
Challenges in the public sector
- Political Dynamics and Polarization: Public sector agencies are government-run. This means they are subject to broader political dynamics, agendas, and polarization, which can hinder efforts to repair trust. For instance, leader actions can be interpreted as being politically motivated or indicative of their broader ideology, rather than prioritizing the needs and well-being of a specific organisation or unit.
- High Public Expectations and Intense Scrutiny: Public sector agencies are held to a higher standard of accountability, integrity, and transparency because they have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of citizens. When these high expectations are not met, the disillusionment can be severe. Intense media and public scrutiny also mean that trust repair processes are highly visible and influenced by diverse stakeholder groups, from regulators to social media commentators.
- Delivering Essential Services: Public sector agencies provide essential services like healthcare, education, and social welfare, for which citizens have a limited ability to opt out. Citizens’ dependency on these services can intensify their emotional reactions to trust violations, making the repair process more complex.
These factors, political influence, higher moral expectations, and a vast, diverse, and dependent audience, collectively make trust repair in public contexts a more intricate and demanding task.
A 5-Step Framework for Trust Repair
Our framework integrates key insights from years of empirical research* to outline a logical sequence of practices for restoring trust in public agencies. These practices are not always linear; they often overlap and need to be implemented in a complementary manner.
- The Initial Response: Getting It Right from the Start
The first public response to a trust violation is crucial because it sets the tone for the entire repair process. It signals to the public whether the organisation has the ability, benevolence, and integrity to handle the situation effectively. An effective initial response should include:
- Acknowledgement: Acknowledge what happened and take the issue seriously.
- Empathy: Express genuine empathy for those who have been affected.
- Action: Announce an investigation and take immediate action to prevent further harm, if appropriate.
- Timeliness: A timely, sincere, and credible response.
A prompt and successful initial response will help demonstrate trustworthiness. In contrast, remaining silent (reticence) is highly ineffective as it conveys a lack of concern and can signal incompetence and/or a lack of integrity and benevolence toward stakeholders. It’s recommended that initial communications do not attribute blame prematurely, as this can lead to inaccurate conclusions and further loss of trust.
- Investigation and Discovery: Uncovering the ‘Why’
Once an initial response has been made, the next step is to investigate the causes of the transgression. This practice addresses stakeholders’ need to make sense of what happened and why. The goal is to provide a clear explanation for the violation and assign responsibility. Strategies include:
- Conducting Public Inquiries: Independent investigations or public inquiries lend credibility to the process and demonstrate a commitment to transparency.
- Voluntary Disclosure: Openly sharing information about the wrongdoing, especially if it might not have been discovered otherwise, shows a commitment to honesty.
- Providing Explanations: Explanations that detail why a transgression occurred (not just what happened) are particularly effective at increasing the predictability of a recurrence and can reduce negative attributions.
It is important to distinguish between competence and integrity violations. Integrity violations, which are attributed to stable, intentional characteristics, are much more challenging to repair than competence violations, which are typically viewed as accidental or temporary. Denial is a tactic often adopted, and research suggests that it can be more effective than an apology in repairing trust following an integrity violation. However, denial is particularly risky; denying responsibility can be perceived as another violation, making trust repair even more difficult.
- Making Amends: Restoring the Relationship
This stage is about taking tangible action to restore the relationship with those affected and resolving the negative emotions caused by the violation. It addresses a fundamental question from stakeholders: “Have appropriate amends been made?”. Key strategies include:
- Apologies: Apologies are one of the most widely studied trust repair strategies. An effective apology should include an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, an expression of regret, an explanation for the violation, and a promise to repair the relationship. While apologies can be highly effective, especially for competence failures, they are most impactful when paired with other actions, such as compensation or punishment.
- Compensation and Reparations: Offering to compensate victims for their loss signals remorse and helps restore balance to the relationship. Studies have found that compensation is most effective when it is voluntary.
- Penance and Punishment: Paying a penalty for the transgression, such as firing or sanctioning those responsible (especially leaders), is a powerful way to signal genuine remorse and restore norms in the relationship.
- Rehabilitation and Reform: Building a Better Future
To prevent a similar incident from happening again, organisations must implement substantive changes. This practice relies on a structural mechanism to implement formal and informal controls that prevent future trust violations. This is about answering the question, “What changes have been made to prevent future transgressions?”. Actions can include:
- Introducing new policies and codes of conduct.
- Reforming leadership, governance, and organisational culture.
- Changing laws and regulations.
- Replacing leaders who were responsible or implicated in the violation, which has been shown to be effective at accelerating trust repair.
The most effective reforms are those that are adopted voluntarily and are designed to meet the needs of both internal and external stakeholders.
- Transparency: Demonstrating Renewed Trustworthiness
Transparency is the final key practice, involving open information sharing that allows the public to monitor the organisation’s activities and assess its trustworthiness. This mechanism, known as “inward observability” provides the evidence stakeholders need to see that the organisation is truly trustworthy. Strategies include:
- Open Reporting: Openly sharing information about the organisation’s practices and decisions.
- Independent Audits: Conducting periodic external audits and openly sharing the outcomes to demonstrate accountability.
- Trusted Third-Party Affiliations: Leveraging endorsements and certifications frbom trusted third parties to signal trustworthiness (also known as the transference mechanism).
While transparency is a powerful tool, it can also have paradoxical effects. Revealing problematic behaviour in the short term may reduce trust, but not disclosing relevant information can be even more damaging in the long run.
The Path Forward
Building, preserving, and repairing trust is a continuous, context-dependent process that requires a combination of these practices. While no single strategy is a silver bullet, our framework provides a robust and integrated approach for public sector leaders to navigate the complexities of trust repair and work toward restoring the essential bond between public institutions and the people they serve. By committing to a comprehensive strategy that includes sincere responses, thorough investigations, meaningful amends, structural reforms, and unwavering transparency, public agencies can begin the long journey back to a place of confident public trust.
Read the full paper here:
Gillespie, N. and Daly, N. (2025). Repairing trust in public sector agencies. In F. Six, J. A. Hamm, D. Latusek, E van Zimmerman & K. Verhoest (Eds.), Handbook On Trust in Public Governance (pp. 98-115). https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802201406
Author: Dr Niamh Daly, Assistant Professor of HRM at Dublin City University Business School
*The image is adapted from the book chapter, and that image was adapted and integrated from Bachmann et al. (2015), Gillespie & Dietz (2009), Gillespie et al. (2021), and Pfarrer et al. (2009).
SOCIAL CHANNELS
LATEST NEWS
