The Traitors has become one of the UK’s biggest recent TV hits. This cultural phenomenon is a programme that rewards, even glorifies, deceit.
Viewers are gripped by watching a group of people attempt to separate evidence from hunches, while a small number deliberately misdirect the crowd. The dynamic is exaggerated for television, but the behaviours are familiar to anyone who has sat in a meeting where the loudest voice replaces evidence, or where discussion drifts off course after a well-timed diversion.
It also arrives at a moment when attitudes to deceit also appear to be shifting. The latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey shows the proportion of people who believe it is wrong for someone on benefits to take casual work fell from 68% in 2016 to 53% in 2022. These findings suggest the general public’s view on what is acceptable or justifiable is changing, especially under economic pressure.
So, what can employers learn from The Traitors in the new age of deceit?
Be audience-led
Workplace deceit is rarely about outright lies. More often, it appears as ambiguity: vague commitments, selective silence or topic-shifting in meetings. This kind of behaviour is easy to misread unless employers look beyond surface actions.
The appropriate starting point, therefore, is diagnosis. Behaviour shifts when context shifts, and factors such as incentives, perceived risk, leadership credibility and psychological safety all shape how people act.
Recent years have created a climate of sustained uncertainty in the workplace, driven by the Covid-19 crisis, AI disruption and economic turbulence. In such an environment, self-preservation rises, as does the temptation to say what feels safest rather than what is true. But trust can quickly erode when organisations say one thing and do another, or when employees appear to see poor conduct at senior levels without clear consequences.
Being audience-led means understanding how people really experience the organisation, not just how they are told to in organisational communications.
Use personas that reflect real employees
Many organisations still communicate to staff as if the workforce is one audience. It isn’t, and in an age of fragile trust, this blunt approach risks creating more confusion and more evasive behaviour.
A practical way to think about behaviour is simple: can people do what is asked? Do they have the opportunity? And do they actually want to? Problems that look like bad behaviour are often about capability, opportunity or motivation. When people feel unable to comply safely or confidently, they are more likely to work around rules, keep quiet or perform compliance rather than practise it.
For example, at IBM, leaders were looking at how to encourage more active allyship across a global workforce. Rather than assuming resistance, they examined why people might not engage. Some lacked confidence, some feared getting it wrong and others were unclear what constructive allyship looked like in practice. The starting point was understanding different reasons for behaviour, not lecturing people to care more.
ITV applied similar logic during a digital transformation. Rather than relying on blanket messages, the broadcaster created a small set of digital personas based on how employees used technology, which platforms they trusted and where they disengaged. Insights were gathered through a quiz that allowed employees to identify their persona, with communications tailored accordingly.
The lesson is that behaviour changes less through persuasion than through design: make it easier, safer, and more rewarding to act in line with stated values.
Differentiate challengers from saboteurs
One lesson from The Traitors is how easily challenge can be mistaken for betrayal. In organisations, this often leads to the wrong people being labelled difficult.
There is an important difference between challengers and saboteurs. The former question strategy but remain committed to the organisation, while the latter seek to undermine through cynicism, gossip or constant deflection.
Between the two sits a large middle group: people who are not malicious but disengaged, uncertain or non-committal, and whose silence can also be misread as deceit. In an environment of rising mistrust, leaders must create cultures where challenge is safe and constructive, while persistent undermining is addressed quickly. When sabotage is tolerated it spreads; when challenge is suppressed, problems simply go underground.
Roundtable forums for structured honesty
One of the more interesting features of The Traitors is the roundtable: a structured forum where behaviour is discussed directly.
In the workplace, the roundtable’s equivalent should not be a public reckoning but a regular, disciplined space for clear feedback and explicit communication. Too many misunderstandings stem from politeness being mistaken for agreement, which can become a recipe for quiet resentment. Firms must therefore encourage a more transactional style of communication – ‘this is what we agreed, this is what success looks like and this is what I will do’ – to reduce ambiguity and resentment.
Psychological safety matters here. It means people can speak truthfully without fear of retaliation and it doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations.
Drop false narratives
Organisations often reach for “family” language to create belonging. The problem is that it rarely fully plays out in reality. When restructures or redundancies arrive, the gap between that warm rhetoric and the hard decisions feel like a betrayal. That is fertile ground for cynicism and covert resistance.
A business can care deeply about its people and still be honest about hierarchy, power and trade-offs. In fact, honesty and clarity tend to produce stronger trust because they reduce that sense of betrayal if and when difficult decisions are made.
In the age of deceit, integrity has become an employer design problem: openness and clarity in communications and strong, honest leadership are needed to overcome mistrust and secrecy.
Trust is not built by insisting on integrity. It is built by creating an environment where integrity is the rational choice.
The Traitors has become one of the UK’s biggest recent TV hits. This cultural phenomenon is a programme that rewards, even glorifies, deceit.
Viewers are gripped by watching a group of people attempt to separate evidence from hunches, while a small number deliberately misdirect the crowd. The dynamic is exaggerated for television, but the behaviours are familiar to anyone who has sat in a meeting where the loudest voice replaces evidence, or where discussion drifts off course after a well-timed diversion.
It also arrives at a moment when attitudes to deceit also appear to be shifting. The latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey shows the proportion of people who believe it is wrong for someone on benefits to take casual work fell from 68% in 2016 to 53% in 2022. These findings suggest the general public's view on what is acceptable or justifiable is changing, especially under economic pressure.
