30 Jan How CEOs Can Build Trust in an Age of Grievance
Declining trust and a crisis of grievance in a fragmented world make for compelling headlines, but what can the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer tell us that offers reason for optimism and action?
Business remains the most trusted institution, with three-quarters of the public trusting employers to do what is right.
For trust to be maintained, any reservoir of goodwill built on competence and ethical behaviour must translate into concrete action. CEOs must empower their organisations to act fairly and broadly to benefit customers, employees, and communities.
CEOs’ priorities for 2025 include addressing pressing issues to improve business performance, such as affordability, employee skills, climate change, truthful communication, and workplace civility.
I have summarised the Trust Barometer 2025 findings into four to-dos for CEOs:
- Do No Harm – Reduce any harmful impact of products, packaging, processes, supply chains, or locations that could negatively affect customers or communities. This includes both direct impacts, such as pollution, and indirect impacts, such as energy use contributing to climate change.
- Do Better – Improve business performance in ways that ladders up to societal benefits. For example, upskill or retrain employees with digital and human skills for future jobs, demonstrate a clear growth path that fosters economic optimism, and make products and services more accessible, affordable, and inclusive.
- Do Good – Businesses, in collaboration with governments, have a vital role in job creation, sustainability, the dissemination of truthful information, fair taxation, and the well-being of local communities.
- Do Unto Others – Charity begins at home. This principle applies to the workplace, where there is an increasing need for civility. It entails respecting diverse employee opinions and backgrounds and maintaining zero tolerance for discrimination, hostile acts, or violence. CEOs must lead by example when engaging with those they disagree with, promote positive activism, and act swiftly to correct disinformation.
No one expects 2025 to be easy, but CEOs have a responsibility to lead with hope and purpose—not doom.
