Action on societal issues helps build employee trust
Thursday, 06 Feb 2020
YPO, the global leadership community of more than 28,000 chief executives in 135 countries, conducted a member survey designed to provide the chief executive perspective on the importance of stakeholder trust, the extent to which they are taking action and succeeding at building cultures of trust within their organizations, and their views on the role of societal impact in building trust with stakeholders.
YPO’s 2020 Global Pulse Survey on Trust, conducted 1-18 November 2019 with 2,960 respondents from 115 countries, found that trust was a key matter for business leaders around the world. Key findings include:
96% of chief executives globally rate building and maintaining trust with stakeholders as a high priority, with nearly half saying that the importance of building trust with stakeholders has increased in the past five years.
71% of business leaders across the globe agree that their business can have a positive societal impact without sacrificing profits
Over two-thirds of business leaders in Asia agree that taking action on societal issues positively impacts employee trust (67% Asia, 54% rest of world) and public trust (68% Asia, 55% rest of world) in their organizations
Only 40% of global business leaders find it easy to build trust with employees
Nearly a third of Asia business leaders cited company culture as one of the biggest barriers to building employee trust (32% Asia, 20% rest of world) Other major obstacles included competing priorities, lack of time and operational structure.
Global business leaders agree that trust is an issue which they feel increasing urgency around yet over 60% have yet to measure employee trust within their business and only 34% have specific plans within their business for building and maintaining employee trust
89% of global CEO’s surveyed agree that, as business leaders, they are under pressure to embody their organizations’ values through their actions
YPO’s 2020 Global Pulse Survey on Trust Methodology:
The 2020 Global Pulse Survey on Trust was conducted by YPO from 1-18 November 2019 via an online questionnaire. A total of 2,960 YPO members responded to the survey. The sample included members in 115 countries. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.84 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.