ICREO 2022 – The Challenge remains intact, 8 years seeking to understand and strengthen Trust
October 04, 2022
In December 2014, hand in hand with our purpose of accompanying organizations to grow and develop in a more humane and ethical way, we set ourselves the challenge of going beyond numbers in understanding and building trust in brands, companies and institutions. We set out to understand what it was that built trust for people, in a local and global context of widespread distrust.
We discovered not only that there were specific dimensions associated with this key indicator for companies (Honesty and Transparency: being honest and transparent, telling the truth and not hiding information. Responsibility: being responsible towards people and the environment, fulfilling what is promised and doing responsibility for their mistakes. Empathy: truly caring about the interests of people and society. Background and Performance: having a track record and performance that gives security and assurance. Closeness: being close and accessible.); also, that the most relevant dimensions from the citizens (Honesty and Transparency, Responsibility and Empathy) were being little considered by the brands. As organizations, we were working the wrong way.
Today, 8 years later and with a renewed and updated model, the crisis of confidence and the challenges for organizations remain practically intact, but with greater urgency in the presence of a more complex and pressing country context. Although the average of Trust has increased from 3.5 to 4.3 since 2015 (on a scale from 1 to 7), we are still far from an acceptable result. This becomes more interesting when observing the performance of companies, which, although it reaches a score of 4.4 in 2022, also presents higher levels of expectations (importance) in all dimensions of trust.
People expect more from companies, and to meet this expectations, in 2014 we invited them to develop the dimensions of the New Trust; an invitation that is not only still valid today, but also provides new insights to advance in this area:
- Together with the strengthening of Responsibility and Empathy, the management of Transparency in daily life is installed as a key factor. The latest ICREO measurement shows us a high correlation between brand knowledge and this dimension, which implies communicating more and better those contents with the potential to strengthen trust. What we do and why we do it, always from a path of humility and willingness to continuous improvement and self-criticism.
- This measurement also emphasizes the importance of taking responsibility for the relevance of companies in people’s lives: it is not enough to be important to be trustworthy and, even worse, of the 12 categories considered most relevant by public opinion, only 3 reach high levels of trust (Personal Care and Hygiene, Home Hygiene and Disinfection, and Technology). Companies in key spaces for people, such as Basic Services, Isapres and AFPs, among others, continue to owe as we identified in previous measurements.
Along with these opportunities, the 2022 measurement also updates the guidelines from another essential area for building business trust: the internal world. Thanks to ICREO Organizations, a parallel model to measure trust within companies that we have developed in conjunction with OTIC SOFOFA Capital Humano, today we know that there is progress in the perception of trust among employees, going from a score of 4.9 in 2021, to 5.2 on average. But, as in the case of trust in public opinion, this increase in the average indicator continues to be accompanied by important gaps in the construction of internal trust, the most critical being that which is linked to promoting collaborative work, where workers they can contribute and that their ideas are considered (40% of the participants evaluate it with marks from 1 to 4).
Undoubtedly today we are facing a more demanding and demanding social context for brands, companies and institutions, both outside and inside organizations; but today we also have more and better tools to advance in building trust with our different audiences. The challenge remains, but the urgency in the midst of 2022 seems more inescapable and unquestionable than ever. The time has come to take charge.
