Trust & Quality Information: Our Global Imperative

“I want to reiterate this value of quality information. 60% of people come into every situation distrusting. We’re at a new low level of distrust in the world. Unless I have quality facts I cannot make good decisions. We’ve got, as corporations, to be part of giving good information. Of both kinds…both sides…not just everything good for your company. The last point…this mass class divide is corrosive and scary and we have to do everything we can in the next months about food, energy, and health because that is the litmus test as to whether business is seen as a quality participant in our society.”

-Richard Edelman

Commentary from Richard Edelman

“…business emerged as the most trusted institution of January 2021…business is the most trusted institution in the world still, that NGOs are second, not exactly close, Government a trailing 3rd, and media a distant 4th. It is business over Government in every democracy…it is government over business in every autocracy. Very important (regarding trust gains)…those trust gains came because of the top 3 quartiles of income. The bottom quartile absolutely flat-lined. The trust gap between the highest quartile and the lowest quartile (income earners) has never been larger. We have never seen numbers like this before. Our hypothesis…the bottom quartile is being pinched by inflation, cost of living, fear of job loss, worse outcomes from the pandemic, and they’ve never recovered. This is the tinder on the floor of the world’s situation. With one spark this is going to be populism and yellow vests and more. There’s also a very clear sense that business has moved beyond its economic responsibility to societal issues and now, for the first time, geopolitical issues. 85% of our respondents said the #1 job of business is make jobs, innovation, growth. The second, however, very close is societal, which is sustainability, diversity & inclusion, inequality. The third, for the first time, geopolitics. 60% told us we expect business to punish countries that violate international norms.?

…the Ukraine invasion…why did a thousand countries get out of Russia…31% jump in trust for those companies that left and for those that companies that stayed in Russia, a 38 point drop in trust…nearly 50% of consumers told us that they have bought or boycotted brands because of what the parent company did…similarly employees told us I am 25% more likely to advocate for my employer if we got out of Russia

…the broad brush of geopolitics is the new force that business will have to confront. If you think of business as a juggler, you are juggling two balls, economic performance and societal issues. Now you have three balls…these are big new mandates for business. Listen to the new jobs of the CEO:?

60% draw a moral line in the sand…do not participate in countries which violate moral norms

• 61% use your voice on human rights reforms
• 70% shape policy for your home country

Business has been given too many jobs. We are now at the point of being unable to do everything that is expected of us. Why is it so…because Government is so unable. Business is seen as 50 points more competent than Government. That is why we keep getting assigned these new tasks. But in a moment where we start to see recession impending, where there will be real choices for CEOs about how am I going to keep people working, can I keep people working, where are they going to be working…we’re going to have to make the tough calls. You can’t juggle these three balls equally in a recessive environment. It is my prediction that we’re going to have to orient to running a good business first, societal second, and geopolitical third...in the next phase trust will continue to be largely in business, but business faces a moment of great peril…”

Commentary from Helle Thorning-Schmidt

“We have the poorest people not trusting anything…that’s not one country…that’s everywhere. It vacates the middle of politics because if you don’t trust anything you tend to go to the extremes of politics…if you don’t have strong politicians who can meet in the middle, the politicians will tend to hide behind business…and asking business to do politicians jobs…”

Commentary from Dr. David Nabarro

“After having a bad COVID we’re now having a much worse cost of living crisis. Our calculations are that 94 countries are threatened by this with a prospect of either severe hunger or even famine and 1.7 billion people are living in countries are facing these risks…I put it to you that this cost of living crisis could lead to the worst set of economic and social challenges that we’ve seen perhaps for 4 or 5 decades…COVID started it, climate change exacerbates it. [For CEOs] Look at all aspects of your operations and ask yourselves what are the decisions we can make that will least damage the well being of the 20% poorest people who are either in our supplier community, or in our customer community, or with whom we’re trying to maintain relationships…it’s not charity, it’s the future of the world.”

Commentary from Brad Smith

“The #1 thing I see when I read the results is that frankly business leaders should read these results with a large dose of humility…if they don’t know what to believe, they focus more on who to believe and they believe people they know…CEOs as a whole are 49% (trusted)…people are 8 points more likely to believe their co-workers than their CEO. So, if there’s 3 people sharing a desk that graduated from a university last year, they’re more likely to be believable then the CEO that’s leading the company…I think people want business leaders to provide information about what they see…the problems they understand, data, information that can be more trusted, not necessarily to rush around tell everybody what they should do.”