Employee Engagement Insights from the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer
According to a study launched today by Edelman, companies have the opportunity to leverage their own employees to reinforce their “Trusted Innovation” story and bolster the credibility of leadership.
The Edelman Trust Barometer – an annual global study that measures how people around the world trust government, media, business, NGOs and the credibility of traditional spokespeople, including CEOs and media – looked at trends related to trust and innovation for the first time this year. Results pointed to increased concerns around innovation globally, and more than half of the informed public respondents feel innovation is moving too quickly and is driven purely by the bottom line.
This year’s study also found that a company’s in-house technical experts (e.g., engineers, scientists and developers who work for a company) are, on average, 22 percentage points more credible than the CEO, a trend that shows across nearly every industry. These employees have recently become an increasingly vital group to help reinforce the overall credibility of a company’s strategy.
“Now, more than ever, companies need to look internally to elevate and amplify the voices that consumers and stakeholders want to hear from most, employees,” said Christopher Hannegan, founder and executive vice president of Edelman’s Employee Engagement practice offering. “The C-Suite should start embracing transparency and leverage the power of trusted employee voices to support their leadership platforms and messages.”
The Trust Barometer also found specific groups of employees can help reinforce a company’s “Trusted Innovation” story and bolster the credibility of leadership in different yet effective ways:
- General employees are uniquely positioned to understand the role that their own company is playing in the broader picture of innovation. Therefore, companies have an opportunity and obligation to ensure their employees are conversant in innovations their company is pursuing – not only what the innovations are, but the benefits and reasons behind those innovations.
- In-house technical experts can best help underscore a company’s innovation story by tying it back to the overall strategy. They can also serve as trusted internal ambassadors, helping educate general employees about a company’s innovations in relatable and tangible terms.
- Front line employees are the first line of defense with customers, and can help advocate a company’s innovation story while also bringing back customer feedback to inspire the next wave of innovation.
Additionally, by reinforcing the credibility of a company’s innovation story by explaining the customer-centric process behind developing a new innovation and underscoring how it will improve people’s lives, consumers are ultimately more likely to feel the innovation is rooted in a more meaningful purpose.
About Edelman Employee Engagement
Edelman Employee Engagement helps organizations accelerate business performance, delivered by highly engaged and trusted employees. We do this by making meaningful, trust-building connections — connecting employees with the company, with each other and with the outside world. Our global network of employee engagement specialists develop engagement strategy; deploy the tools and processes to deliver it; create the multimedia channels and content that support it; and design the insight mechanisms to measure it.
For more information, email us at employee.engagement@edelman.com.
About the Edelman Trust Barometer
The 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer is the firm’s 15th annual trust and credibility survey. The survey was powered by research firm Edelman Berland and consisted of 20-minute online interviews conducted on October 13th – November 24th, 2014. The 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer online survey sampled 27,000 general population respondents with an oversample of 6,000 informed publics ages 25-64 across 27 markets. All informed publics met the following criteria: college-educated; household income in the top quartile for their age in their country; read or watch business/news media at least several times a week; follow public policy issues in the news at least several times a week.
For more information, contact:
Ashley Engler
ashley.engler@edelman.com
212.738.6080