Last week, I attended a breakfast celebrating Washingtonian Magazine’s ‘50 Great Places to Work 2013.’ The emcees highlighted each of the recognized companies and noted some of the factors that make each a great place to work.

I heard my fair share of superfluous office perks being thrown around—like companies providing tons of organic snacks for their employees and providing spa days—but I was pleasantly surprised by a greater focus on the more important ingredients that go into a great company culture.

The ingredient that stuck out most to me during the event was Trust. From the sound of it, many—if not most—of the companies recognized as a great place to work have created a culture of trust. At these companies, management trusts its employees and employees trust management.

A culture of trust within an organization can appear in a number of ways:

1) Defining the workday

One of the more tangible representations of trust within an organization is how it defines the workday. Companies who trust their employees are realizing that employees no longer need to clock in to the office at a specific time in the morning and stay at the office until a specific time in the evening.

The biggest reason for this is technological change. Companies have come to expect to be able to reach their employees at off-hours via smartphones, tablets and laptops. The forward-thinking companies recognize this and have altered their policies to make the inside-the-office part of the day less strict in terms of attendance. This is only possible if companies trust that their employees will get their work done no matter where they are.

2) Vacation policies

Another tangible representation of trust within an organization is its vacation policy. Seven of the 50 recognized companies offer employees unlimited vacation. Those organizations trust that their employees won’t take advantage of that policy (or lack thereof). It turns out that employees in those organizations don’t take advantage, and the organization benefits from lower administrative costs—as they no longer have to track vacation.

3) Communication

Communication is a very important ingredient in creating a great company culture that stands on par with—not as a sub-category of—Trust. But there is an aspect to Communication that involves trust. Trust is a two-way street; not only do organizations need to trust their employees, but employees need to be able to trust their organizations.

Companies that have developed a culture of trust do a good job of communicating to employees the direction that management is taking the company. In many cases, this includes communication of strategic initiatives that had been previously withheld from employees. Companies are realizing that better-informed employees about the direction of the company will be more aligned with that direction, and more motivated. Companies are also realizing that employees can generally be trusted with those sorts of communications.