This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 24, 2017 - April 30, 2017

BUILDING trust and incorporating it into a company’s ethos and culture is no walk in the park. “This is not something you can say is a PR or marketing effort and leave it to those teams. It has to be lived by the company as a whole,” PwC Malaysia managing partner Sridharan Nair says, adding that there are four steps to achieve this.

“First, you need to establish your ground zero. Establish and have a consensus that it is important for your business and it varies from business to business depending on size, scale and so forth. If you don’t internalise that, and if you don’t get a consensus view that it is important for the business, then it is a non-starter. Everyone needs to believe it. The organisation needs to buy in — right from the top to policies and processes.

“Second, where do we stand? You need to find a way to measure the state of trust various stakeholders have in your business. There are various methodologies to create a trust profile, one of which is used in our judging.” (More on the judging and methodology of PwC’s Building Trust Awards next month.)

Thirdly, notes Sridharan, or Sri, the company needs a plan to address the gaps and issues, and consistency in how it does things. Execution is the fourth and final step.

There are a few other dimensions to consider too, he says. “To move forward the discussion on trust in a business, the corporate needs to engage with the public. This can be done in a couple of ways — by seeking the views of the public and engaging it on social media and other platforms.”

Sri cites Lego as an example of a corporate that reached out to the public and earned its trust in the UK.

“Lego went one step further and used crowdsourcing as a way to get ideas and input. It asked members of the public to gauge what toys they would like, getting them to give ideas and suggestions. It then assessed the proposals, looked at whether they were feasible and eventually rewarded those who proposed them.

“Lego was voted one of the UK’s most trusted brands because of its engagement with the public. That is an example of working with the public, whether through discussions and collaborations or taking it further with, for instance, crowdsourcing.”

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