Building and sustaining trust

Trust has been tested, and the recent global financial crisis has already made sure of it – has shown just how important it is, and how easily it can be damaged. However, in a world that’s changing beyond recognition – the very purpose of businesses will come into question, and not only its practice.

Demand for greater organizational transparency is rising – the pressure on the environment is also increasing – as global population grows – becomes more urbanized – and social discriminations is already creating disagreement in some countries.

And the social media has afforded everyone to air their complaints – creating a trend that is sure to grow immensely as consumers become wealthier and more educated, thus choosy and discretionary about how they spend their hard earned income.

Consumer expectations is rising, thus, affording other stakeholders more power. Consumers are becoming more aware of their surrounding – more and more concerned about the impact of businesses on their local communities, meanwhile governments and investors are motivated by the popular demand.

How does this relate to your business?

Many executives already recognize that businesses have social as well as financial responsibilities – And it’s important to balance the interests of different stakeholders, instead of just focusing only on investors, employees and customers. Nonetheless – wide gap – between what most businesses aspire to do – and actually do.

Still most businesses tend to only measure financial performance, and define risk only in terms of occurrences that could upset their finances – In future – businesses must factor in broader, non-financial considerations into their business decisions – social and environmental, thus measuring the full impact of all their activities. Affording the management to understand the trade-offs between different strategies thus making the best decisions for every stakeholder. By doing so and reporting the results will help businesses earn more trust and thus more profit.