We have a trust issue – so what can we do?
3 out of 5 people believe that Governments and businesses make their lives harder and serve narrow interests with wealthy people benefitting unfairly from the system.
"A high sense of grievance leads to an erosion of trust across business, government, media and NGOs"
That’s just one of the findings from the Edelman Trust Barometer for 2025.
The report finds that when we communicate with our audience, 3 out of 5 people adopt the default position of “I don’t’ believe you.”
Businesses are barely more trustworthy than Government according to the latest report – and trust levels in government are always very low irrespective of how the economy may be doing at any point in time.
So what does that mean for us?
This makes it very hard for our communications to land in the way that we want them to – and to have the desired impact.
This applies to our internal communications as well as our communications with potential employees, existing customers and potential new customers.
As the Edelman report says
“Grievance imposes a trust penalty”.
And the direction of travel does not make for good reading.Â
The Edelman report highlights an “unprecedented decline in employer trust” from 2024 to 2025.
And some of this distrust is very deep rooted.
More than half of the people surveyed in the UK (52%) agreed with the following statement:
Business leaders purposely mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations
What’s more, the survey also found that no news sources in the UK are trusted – and this includes
- Search engines
- Traditional media (newspapers, radio, TV)
- Social media
- Owned media such as websites, blogs, email marketing lists and branded company profiles.
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Indeed, social media and “owned media” were the least trusted of all of these categories – so the very channels that we are using to communicate with our audience are the ones that our audience are most sceptical about.
“Those with a high sense of grievance with business do not perceive them as either competent or ethical.”
Those surveyed believe that businesses are not doing enough to address:
- Affordability
- Climate change
- Retraining
- MisinformationÂ
- DiscriminationÂ
What can businesses do to address this lack of trust?
The report does give a glimpse into how businesses can seek to address this issue – and the statement that the vast majority of survey respondents agreed with is:
The answer, it seems, is empathy and compassion – not power.
Where does this deep mistrust of businesses come from?
The Edelman report believes that 20 years of global crisis events have gradually eroded trust.
This goes back to the WTO riots in 1999 – the “battle of Seattle”.
This was followed by the Iraq war in 2003, the global financial crisis in 2008, Brexit in 2016 – and it’s lingering impact – COVID in 2020, the Ukraine invasion in 2022 and the war in Gaza.
When you list all of these like this, it’s easy to understand how this could have such a negative impact on trust.
It’s a human defence mechanism – if I’m not sure what to believe any more, the safest thing to do is assume everything is a lie.
Recognition of this can be seen in the theme for World Mental Health Day 2025.
“Access to services – Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies.”
Some of the advice given in advance of World Mental Health Day on 10th October 2025 was how to deal with “overwhelm – when global events and relentless bad news become too much.”
The recommendation provided in order to improve our mental health is essentially to avoid using social media channels as much as possible.
- Turn off push notifications
- Use a watch or alarm clock
- Manage your social media feeds
- Set a time limit
- Consider phone free zones
- Balance the negative with positive
The Edelman report provides some insight into how we can change how we communicate – and who we use to deliver the message – to help rebuild trust with our audience.
They outlined a trust pyramid which shows that although we distrust CEOs – who are very often the person who is at the forefront of our communications – there is potential to explore the use of other people in the business to build trust.
Looking at the UK data, the people that are trusted the most are:
- Scientists
- Teachers
- My neighbours
- My CEO
We then go into the ‘neutral’ territory where ‘Citizens of my country’ find themselves – a driver for this being the divisive nature of UK politics since the Brexit vote in 2016.
When we look at who is not trusted in the UK we find:
- CEOs
- Government leaders
- Journalists
The picture in Ireland is only very slightly different with ‘Citizens of my country’ trusted but ‘My CEO’ falling into the ‘neutral’ category.
Another difference in Ireland is that CEOs are at the very bottom of the list of trusted groups of people, where journalists and Government leaders also find themselves.
There is evidence from other reports that supports this view.
Earning trust through employee advocacy
“Employee advocacy programs have led to a 25% increase in brand awareness and a 30% boost in employee engagement.”
An article from First Up reported that “employees have greater credibility than impersonal brands – their words can carry greater weight with friends, family and peers. That’s the essence of employee advocacy.”
Another global study from FleishmannHillard reported that “consumers are 3 times more likely to trust a company employee rather than a CEO when it comes to sorting fact from fiction about a brand.”
More evidence for this is provided in a LinkedIn study which says “job candidates have 3 times greater trust in the company’s employees than the organisation to provide credible information on what it’s like to work there.”
Yet the majority of us use our branded company page (highly distrusted) as our primary means of communication with our audience instead of using our employees (who are much more trusted) as the vehicle for communicating with our audience.
The default position when we’re communicating with our audience is (in a lot of cases) to roll out the highly distrusted CEO instead of using our much more trusted employees to relay the message.
So one of the answers, it seems, is employee advocacy – broadening the visibility of our teams and ensuring that they are the primary delivery mechanism for our communications.
If we trust scientists, teachers and our neighbours – we can safely assume that we’ll also trust subject matter experts and our peers and our organisations are filled with people who fit that profile.
Is there evidence that employee advocacy works?
It’s a fair question – and if you’re trying to convince the CEO, you’ll need the evidence right?
A Forbes article reported that Ivanti saved $500,000 in annual marketing costs by using staff voices more.
Employees were incentivised and could win up to $500 per quarter based on the impact of their advocacy work.
L’Oreal reported a 6 figure earned media value from employee advocacy activities – so it would have cost them hundreds of thousands of pounds to get the coverage that they enjoyed as a result of employee advocacy activity.
Walmart pays employees to influence customers – although there is a question mark over this “influencing” behaviour and whether it should be identified as sponsored or paid when it relates to online content published from a user’s personal profile rather than a branded company profile.Â
There is also an additional benefit for our organisations – the retention of our best people.
Making our team more visible is often the thing that makes CEOs and HR teams most nervous as it gives our great people a public profile – providing ripe pickings for our competitors.
But the effect is exactly the opposite.
The Hinge Research Institute reported that “86% of employees in an advocacy programme said it had a positive effect on their careers for example, by expanding their network or offering a way to keep up with industry trends.”
Our great employees become even better as a result of the experience of being involved in an advocacy programme.
It’s then up to our rewards and remuneration to ensure that we retain these people within our organisation.
The AI factor
It’s impossible to talk about the trust issue without a reference to AI.
The proliferation of AI image content and more recently, AI video has the potential to further erode trust in our organisations if it is not used correctly.
If we’re not sure whether what we are looking at is real any more – the safest thing for us to do is believe that everything is fake.
And if our communications with our customers are built on a lie – it’s not a great place to start.
This isn’t new.
Stock imagery has been used on websites and social media for decades.
And it’s something that we’ve always warned against when it comes to portraying your organisation – whether that be a stock shot of your office instead of an actual shot of your office.
Or the shot of your employees in a meeting – but it’s not your team.
Maybe the worst example is the stock shot of the service team answering a call – but it’s not your team.
All of this poses the question:
“If they’re lying to me about that, what else are they lying to me about?”
As an old boss of mine used to say,
“When you’re defending, you’re losing.”
And very often we set things up so we’re losing from the very first interaction that our customers have with us.
We need to be very careful about how we adopt AI in relation to our communications – internal and external.
We also need to make sure that we take heed of the evidence regarding how we can build trust back with our audience and make this a foundation stone of our communications.
And even the AI companies agree – with the latest OpenAI marketing campaign using human directors, human actors and a campaign on TV to try and convince us how AI can be used to help us complete everyday tasks from cooking a meal to fixing broken down cars.Â
Putting real, human people front and centre of the stories we tell is the answer.Â
And that’s good news for us all.
