Trust, hard to come by, easy to lose. How do you know what level of trust you enjoy with your various stakeholders? A recent article in Deloitte Insights (read it here) looks at organisational trust and how it can be measured and managed. The article advocates for trust to be seen as any other asset and quantified so it can be managed. Understanding the drivers of trust is key.
Trust is defined as “the foundation of a meaningful relationship between an entity and its stakeholders at both individual and organizational levels.” The authors also note that “trust is built through actions that demonstrate a high degree of competence and the right intent.” The results of this are demonstrated capability, reliability, transparency, and humanity
Importantly, trust is becoming increasingly complex not least because customer expectations are expanding, and employees are expecting more from their organisations. So, in building trust, organisations need to look at actions from the perspective of stakeholders.
Nearly 3000 executives across the globe were surveyed for their reflections on trust, with 17 domains of trust evolving. The top seven of these are:
- Product quality
- Customer experience
- Financial integrity and health
- Authentic resilient leadership
- Innovation, intelligence, and technology
- Ethics
- Culture and purpose.
Rather than repeat the article in its entirety, following are the five steps organisations that wish to manage trust can take:
- Explore trust levels in your organisation
- Diagnose critical gaps
- Prioritize
- Activate
- Protect for the future
The article expands on each of these to give examples and ideas on how these can be achieved. Interestingly, the research also noted that organisations that made the effort to become trustworthy and manage trust performed 30% – 50% better than comparable companies in their industries. Apart from being a good thing to do, investing in your organisations trust levels can pay significant financial rewards. Can you afford not to?
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