The annual Edelman Trust Barometer paints a fairly bleak picture with a jump in people worried they are being lied to by government, business leaders and journalists.
Tom Robinson, CEO of Edelman Australia, joins Sean Aylmer in the studio to talk about the latest report - the 25th year of the Barometer. And while the findings are quite grim, there's a bit of positivity for Australian businesses.
Welcome to the Fear and Greed Business Interview. I'm Sean Almer. We know that trust matters for business. Companies need to build and maintain trust with their consumers, and once lost, it's very hard to get back. That's why the annual Trust Barometer by Edelman is so valuable. This year is the twenty fifth anniversary of the report and the findings are i'd say confronting. Really, we're in a crisis of grievance with a growing sense that business and government serve only a select few. Trust and CEOs and government leaders continues to decline, with a deterioration in trust for both the company that an individual might be working for and business more broadly. But at the same time, business and non government organizations are still considered to be the only institutions that are both competent and ethical ahead of government and media. That trust, though, is fragile. Tom Robinson is the CEO of Edelman Australia and he's my guest in the studio to mark twenty five years of the Trust Barometer. Tom, Welcome back to Fear and Greed.
Thank you very much.
Twenty five years of the Trust Barometer impressive.
We're very fortunate. I think when Richard Edelman CEO set forth on this kind of journey with this idea that he had back in ninety nine two thousand, it was a really monumental kind of change for us. And I think the way that business leaders, government leaders look at that now, it's quite something.
I remember meeting him about it's probably ten years ago. He's one of the more dynamic people I've ever met.
He brings a lot of energy, a lot of ideas. He's a fantastic leader for this business.
For a business, why does trust matter?
Ultimately, it gives you your license to operate trust itself. It's a bit of a leap of faith, it's a leap into the unknown, and it's inherently risky with that in mind, But ultimately it's your willingness to put yourself forward into the arms of something or someone else. And for business leaders, what we see consistently is trust influences and impacts almost every part of your organization, whether it's your ability to demand great pricing sensitivity, influence your supply chain, manage the costs associated with that, to influence kind of policy and regulatory environments as well. It has consequences on every part of your organization.
So kinder one oh one, how do you build trust?
So for the work that we do, we place trust front and center in almost everything where we work with organizations to understand their trust equity and how that plays out amongst their many variety of stakeholders. Ultimately, it comes down to five pillars of trust as we see it, so ability, dependability, self, purpose and within that, what we then tend to look at is how well you stand up across each of those measures. Where how dependable you are is very much your kind of functional levels of trust. You know, do you do what you're going to say for the purpose of the trust problement? Though, we look at competence and ethics of you as you called out earlier, and those two measures are very good indicators as to the levels of trust.
So confidence and ethics, how do you measure those because they're kind of intangible.
Yeah, Ultimately it comes down to a very simple question, an equation for which we ask our panel, and the panel is made up of about one and fifty respondents here in Australia, so it's representative of the country across age, gender, ethnicity and location as well. Much of that comes down to this question of do you trust or do you believe this institution would do the right thing and does what it says it will. Now, competence is your ability to get things done, and ethics is if you'll do the right thing or not. And it's a belief.
Okay, the report itself, as I read it, there's a lot of focus on grievance in this whole idea of a of grievance, and I must say I've found my hard to get my hit around that because it just seemed so very negative.
It's not the most optimistic of reads this before I give you that, and it's quite challenging when we receive it as well. I think I'll probably take a step back back and quickly.
So.
We were talked about twenty five years of trust, and I think over those many years what we have seen is some big macro trends at play, which I think had really led us to almost this moment where we find ourselves now as a country. And it does feel like we're entering the endgame slightly in all of this so big findings. Our trust is now very much local. I trust people like me, those around me, those that resonate with and share the same common beliefs and values that I do. Whereas once we used to trust our institutional leaders or leaders of influence and power and authority, that's no longer the case. We've seen the role of business come to the fort. Business is the most influential institution, not quite the most trusted this year, but by and large over long term, they are the most trusted. They're seen as having the great this ability to change the course of our future and future optimism. And the other I think is the role of media in all of this, which, unfortunately it does continue to come under the microscope and continues to face many many challenges which are built up consistently over time alongside and amplified by the role of technology in Australia and social media specifically. So all of these things are now starting to play out, and there isn't trust ultimately linked to your economic prosperity. And if you have economic prosperity, ultimately you trust the institutions that are designed that are there you believe to help shape that or you don't. And what we have seen is across our top twenty five percent of household income earners, they have had trust, but even for them these last two three four years have been a challenge and they've put that under pressure.
Tom, stay with me, we'll be back in a moment. I'm talking to Tom Robinson, the CEO of Illman Australia. When we left the idea of economic prosperity, creating trust or helping trust, and even that top quartile perhaps not being where they have been previously in the last two or three years, people becoming more distrustful or greater grievances. Is that just a natural progression? Is that something that policy has done as poorly by Is it just a function of post COVID? Why are we in this situation?
There are certain elements of that at place, certainly that we can draw from. I think when we look at grievance, we define it, or certainly our respondents have defined it by ultimately a belief that the system favors the rich. The richer getting richer at my expense. Business and government have put rules and policies and strategies in place to hold me back. It creates this zero sum mindset. Your gain is my loss, and therefore I'm not going to listen to you. And that's the real tension point amongst all of these grievances that we now hold. Sixty two percent of correspondents now view themselves as either moderately or highly aggrieved. And historically what we've seen is divisions that are created in Australia have led to a point now of people wanting to actually take action to address this themselves, and that action is coming through in hostile ways or hostile activism, and a belief that actually now the only way to elicit change and to deliver on a better outcome for myself is to attack people online, to spread disinformation or misinformation, to cause damage to public or private property, these types of things, These statements now very firmly agreed with by many particular youngest demographic, youngest age group, our future leaders of tomorrow, and that's the real challenge.
I mean obvious analogy to trump Ism in the US.
Quite but we are a different country. We have different beliefs and values and regulatory and political structures in plays too, I think manage and mitigate some of what we've seen in the US. But I do think there's an important call out there that ultimately, despite that kind of populist approach and the pushback on certain DEI principles. There is a belief and an inherent requirement for business to step up, to be seen to do more. And if my grievance exists, if my grievance grows, that need is only exasperated.
Okay, it's interesting business. You know, I hate all the banks exit for my bank. My bank's actually pretty good, but don't like the rest type thing. When business does put their head up, there are many people that knock it down. So if you think of the voice, if you think of same sex marriage, there have been some very vocal business leaders on that. I don't know at the end of the day where the shareholders one from that. But is there some sort of social license that business given that? You know, I like my bank, so my bank actually should have a role in that. Is that how it's going to work out or not.
I think there's ctainly a question of governance play as to what societal issues my business should be wading into. And I think that's maybe mean the miss step previously. I think the findings this from the report this year clearly articulate that some of the key challenges that Australians are facing and they want business to address. So things like affordability, climate change, job skills of the future help retrain the workforce, so we're ready to address some of that kind of productivity challenges. So all of this comes to the fore. It's not to business, I think, to wade into every possible societal issue that might come across their desk, but understand where they have the right to play, where the proof points and the history of their businesses is credible enough to actually influence change for their broader community. And that community is not just the Australian public, but also their stakeholders within the business and the shareholders that support that.
I have to quickly ask you about media. Of course, we're not getting any better, so we put it that way in people certainly seem to think that media focuses more on ideology and that type thing than they used to. Maybe that's true that nine News ABC, whoever it is the mainstream media I suppose I'm talking about here? Is this that it surprised you? How does the media attend to itself to improve all that?
Well, unfortunately it didn't surprise me. I often asked the question myself. I've got two young boys and I worry about the future that they will have in terms of where they turn to for credible, reliable, authenticated information that's trustworthy. You know, I see it day to day. I think the rise of kind of misinformation disinformation is not being managed kind of appropriately enough. I think for media themselves there is possibly a greater need to come together. I might liken it to Kissinger Bush and more recently Starmre on a coalition of the willing. Should that be considered. There are real challenges there about people's belief in that media is trying to purposely mislead them, and you know, those priorities, as you say, are all wrong. Now in Australia we have a structure whereby we currently sit as the most second most concentrated media market in the world, just behind Brazil. We said about thirty six on the World Press Freedom Index. That's behind the Dominican Republic. So these are fundamental problems in the way that our media landscape has been allowed to evolve in how private interests are overriding public interest.
We are eternally out of time, but we're too from now. Tom. It's kind of a bit of a groom picture, to be honest.
It is, but I do think there's real opportunity within this as well. I think the findings are quite clear this year. I think you take stock, listen, understand the needs of your communities again internally or externally as employers of choice. That's quite critical, but you have a mandate. There's a demand for business to step up and I think it's in the perfect position to do so. That all has to start with understanding your landscape and acting on that appropriately and positively to the impact of your business.
Tom, thanks for talking to Fear and Greed.
Thank you very much.
As Tom Robinson, CEO of Edelman Australia. This is the Fear and Grade Business Interview. Join us every morning for the full episod s O Fear and Greed, daily business news for people who make their own decisions. I'm Sean i Elma. Enjoy your day.