Leaders need to inspire confidence in their employees to compensate for the drop in confidence that employees have in their companies.

Human resources consultancy Kenexa says that global employee confidence has fallen to 93.8 in its index in the first quarter this year, from 98 in the fourth quarter of last year. The confidence index measures the degree of faith employees have in their employers' marketplace competitiveness and their own careers.

The slump is attributed to employees experiencing more stress, pay freezes and more work heaped on them during the past year.