Edelman Trust Barometer: Implications for the Digital Workplace

The publication this week of the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer report provides fascinating insight for HR and Communications teams with implications for digital workplace professionals. This year, Trust at Work is the overarching theme, coinciding with the crowning of “My Employer” has the most trusted group globally. We dive behind the charts for the details.

Trust cannot be assumed or banked, but can be built

While there have been notable nudges in the right direction across the last year, globally, there is neutral trust levels in business and possibly, unsurprisingly, distrust in government and media. Generally, Edelman pessimistically notes, “distrust continues”.

There is a significant “trust inequality” — the largest it’s ever been — between the informed public and the general public. That is to say, those people who actively arm themselves with information and knowledge have higher levels of trust in institutions than those that don’t. This is important for our work: developing platforms and processes that allow businesses to better inform employees, actively or passively, will help improve trust with many other related benefits.

Outside of the enterprise, Edelman notes a huge rise in the consumption and the amplification of news as people seek to become informed.

Trust at Work

Somewhere between 55% (Edelman’s number, excludes self-employed) and 68% (OECD) of us are employed so the relationship we have with our employer is critical. The good news is that employers are more trusted than all other institutions tested and that that trust is growing, but with that trust comes responsibility. Building and maintaining trust is an active pursuit and intranet and digital workplace teams can assist.

Societally active leaders and businesses creates trust at work

We have new demanding expectations of our CEOs and other business leaders to communicate in ways that they have not in the past. 63% of employees look to leaders as a trusted source of information and 71% say that it’s critically important for them to speak out about challenging politics, industry and employee issues. While many CEOs do this in closed meetings, investor calls or with lobbyists, talking about such issues with employees might be uncomfortable ground for many. It’s clear that these topics — corporate social responsibility — are important to employees. Employees are looking for true leadership beyond operational issues and the digital workplace or intranet is a great place to share it.

But why focus on trust between employers and employees? Edelman make some important connections between trust and other HR metrics that organisations have long had in their sights. When an employee trusts their employer, there is 39 point uplift in their advocacy actions and it has similar impressive uplifts on loyalty (38), engagement (33) and commitment (31). There is true dollar value in building trust.

What to communicate?

Edelman provide excellent guidance on how employers might drive trust at work to meet employee expectations and deliver value. They advocate businesses and leaders be:

• Aspirational: Provide vision for a compelling future. Excite. Train the workforce
• Empower: Give employees a voice; create shared action opportunities
• Transparency: Give information; be visible in your actions
• Live values: show personal commitment inside and outside the organisation

But what of remote workers, self-employed or other workers

For many remote workers, the only physical connection they’ll have with their employer is through their laptop or phone – through the digital workplace. As this is where they’ll breathe in the company values and where they’ll consume the leadership messaging, we must ensure that the digital presentation of these issues is exemplary.

Do those who are self-employed, such as contractors, understand your purpose and trust you? Too often we see these employee audiences excluded from intranet access for security reasons, but the trust story compels us to think deeper about this practice.

What should intranet and DW professionals do?

It’ll be incumbent on us to create the capabilities that colleagues will need to drive trust at work. Consider communication channels such as visible CEO blogs, look at employee advocacy tools to help give employee voices, remove all but the most vital confidentiality permissioning to drive transparency, give CSR homepage space.

TL;DR summary

• The Edelman Trust barometer is out. Trust at Work is the overarching theme
• Trust in employers, from all audiences, is higher than all other institutions
• There are new expectations of employers from employees
• Trust helps drive engagement, loyalty and advocacy
• As DW professionals, there are many supportive roles we can play in driving trust

Aside: Outstanding annual reports we read

There are few reports that we believe are must-reads for digital workplace and intranet professionals:

1. The Edelman Trust Barometer
2. The Kleiner Perkins (Mary Meeker) Internet Trends Report
3. The Nielsen Norman Group Top 10 Intranet Report
4. The StepTwo IIA Awards Report