Trust in the workplace is being eroded by pay cuts, reduced benefits, layoffs and bigger workloads shouldered by survivors.

The good news is that employers and employees can take practical steps to rebuild trust, according to Michele Williams, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Cornell's ILR School.

First of all, notice how people behave, she said. Are they withdrawing from others in the workplace? Refusing lunch invitations they once accepted from colleagues? Chatting less? Working a shorter day?

"When you see those things, something's up," and the patterns often signal workplace distrust, which can compromise productivity, said Williams, who presented her most recent trust research findings at the conference "Rebuilding Trust, Restoring Confidence: 21st Century Leadership Challenges," sponsored by Harvard University's Kennedy School and the Stanford University School of Business in March in Cambridge, Mass.

Start building trust by imagining how others -- your peers, subordinates or boss -- experience a situation, Williams said. Then, "Open a conversation, even when all you know if that something doesn't seem right."

Williams calls that "perspective taking" and says the trust that it builds is especially important in a recession. Perspective taking might even result in a better performance review.

Williams' research with 147 midcareer professionals and their bosses shows that a supervisor's perception of worker benevolence can positively affect performance assessments.

Perspective takers gently test their hunches, Williams said, by asking such questions as "is that project going all right?" or "you seem concerned about something." Perspective takers are communicators who value co-workers' welfare and behave compassionately.

"As a result, co-workers and supervisors perceive perspective takers as benevolent and trustworthy," she said.

Taking perspective, Williams said, "generates positive emotions in others and motivates trust, information sharing, cooperation, learning and flexible responses."

In the workplace, that translates into people being less suspicious of others' motives, going the extra mile, increased adaptability and improved organizational outcomes, she said.

When managers and non-managers are also embattled by economic issues outside of work -- a spouse's layoff, increasing bills, diminished investments -- and under stress, they can become even more "more sensitized to what they perceive as betrayal at work," Williams said. However, in today's outcomes-focused workplace, the distrust cues sent by others are often overlooked.

"The signals are there, but they don't get picked up because people are so focused on tasks," she said. Don't assume you know the root of someone's apparent distrust, she said. "You can easily be wrong."

Perspective taking, at the very least, often helps sort what is a work issue and what might be spillover stress from other areas of a person's life. Workers who don't engage in perspective taking, Williams said, lose opportunities to identify distrust and rebuild relationships.

Mary Catt is the ILR School's staff writer.