Do you remember when the Grim Reaper sounded the alarm last year to signal we had entered the Age of Grievance? The tectonic plates had shifted and we were thrust into a world of plummeting trust where government and business actively conspired to make our lives harder. And wealthy people, like, oh I don’t know, the billionaire owner of a global PR firm, thrived as us mere workers suffered.

Well, that’s just so 2025. The Edelman Trust Barometer, which has enjoyed more ages than my 85-year-old mother, this year claims we’ve entered the Age of Insularity. Yes, seven in ten of us are now reluctant to trust anybody who is very different from us, like, oh, I don’t know, the billionaire owner of a global PR firm.

Insularity can affect any one of us, it seems, even if you do watch your carbs. The Barometer claims it cuts across income, gender, and age, and affects both developing and developed markets. Today, just one third of respondents believe that most people can be trusted.

But what does that actually mean? I trust my next door neighbours to take in parcels and water my plants when I’m away, but would I trust them to oversee my financial matters? I trust the local plumber to service the boiler speedily and cost-effectively, but would I trust him to house sit?

And while I trust my mother implicitly, I’m not sure I’d want her wielding a scalpel if I needed surgery (even if she had the requisite medical training). And when it asks about trusting business: do I think Apple or my local greengrocer? Meta or the bakers? Trust is multi-layered. How do the 34,000 respondents across 28 countries, whom we are assured are ‘informed individuals’, interpret the term ‘trust’?

Alas, one of the issues with a tracker-based study is that nothing much changes year-to-year. So, we still trust our CEO more than your CEO. We still trust companies headquartered in our countries more than foreign companies. And we still don’t trust the media or governments (unless we live in the autocratic regimes of Saudi Arabia, China or the United Arab Emirates, where trust levels are booming at 86% plus! Go figure.) So a new narrative – or age – is required, to make ‘sense’ of it all.

But whether insularity is worse this year than last is moot. For some time, comms teams have been concerned about the effect of polarisation on the workforce. People have been encouraged to bring their whole self to work – which, alas, can mean bigotries and intolerance are revealed, resulting in toxic work environments, reduced productivity and increased employee turnover. It can be a huge cost for business.

To tackle the insularity epidemic, Edelman suggests a ‘novel concept’ called Trust Brokering, where trust brokers ‘create a path for progress and cooperation despite insularity by surfacing common interests and translating realities’, whatever that might mean. And the ideal person to perform this task, the Trust Broker Supremo, as it were, is ‘my employer’. (Spoiler alert: the solution is always the employer/CEO. They are the only feasible saviours of trust because they are, er, potential clients to which to sell Edelman’s services.)

Edelman suggests a three-part strategy to ‘facilitate trust building between distrusting groups’. Promote a shared identity and culture, it advises, so that employees are reminded of what unifies them rather than divides them. Build teams that require people with different values to work together to succeed. And finally, provide mandatory employee training for engaging in constructive dialogue amid conflict. Piece of cake – insularity be gone! Let’s have a new age.

Thankfully, the widespread adulation on LinkedIn that used to surround the launch of the Edelman Trust Barometer has seemingly abated. Those PRs, who really should have known better (they know who they are), no longer liken it to the Holy Grail without which, they annually gushed, they could not work.

Instead, there is growing recognition that this is a marketing/sales exercise, though beautifully executed, which plays into the insecurities of CEOs and business leaders. Don’t you worry, says the sycophantic PR man. Our staff trust you, they just don’t trust any other boss out there. The only question is whether we should trust the Barometer.

CORPORATE REPUTATION

Time to pull your socks up

You wait all year for a report on reputation management, then like buses, two arrive in quick succession. Hot on the heels of Burson’s revelation that the reputation economy is worth $7 trillion, Asian based consultancy Sandpiper has produced Conquering Complexity: transforming to agile and holistic reputation management for the AI era, in which it surveys 3,089 C-suite executives across 11 industries and 27 countries.

Its key finding is that they view navigating AI as today’s most significant reputational issue, cited by 68%, up four percentage points since 2024, reflecting its transformative potential and the risks associated with rapid adoption.

The top five concerns are:

1. Impact of AI  68%

2. ESG & sustainability scrutiny 61%

3. Rise of mis- and dis-information 58%

4. Cyber and data security 53%

5. Employee activism  51%

Sandpiper suggests these risks reflect the ‘interconnected nature of reputation management in an AI world, where technology, societal expectations and organisational culture converge to shape corporate standing’.

Interestingly, geopolitical concerns now sit at the bottom of the risk pile, which may suggest a growing sense of acceptance that this is the new norm or that its ‘erratic’ nature, for want of a better word, means it is hard to control.

Yet while 72% of CEOs recognise the value of reputation management, viewing it as essential to commercial success, they are less convinced about their own organisation’s approach. Just half – 49% - view their organisation’s approach to reputation management as effective, and even fewer believe they are ready to manage any potential risks on the horizon.

Asked whether their organisations are highly prepared to manage these risks, the answers were depressingly low.

1. Impact of AI  40%

2. ESG & sustainability scrutiny 34%

3. Rise of mis- and dis-information 33%

4. Cyber and data security 38%

5. Employee activism  31%

But here is an even starker wake-up call for corporate affairs: just 61% of the global C-suite believe their organisation’s reputation is strong. And the majority believe such reputational weakness has negatively impacted their ability to do business, to attract and retain employees, and even the value of the company. They also expect reputation to become harder to manage in the coming years.

This represents a huge opportunity for corporate affairs. You are always asking: how do we prove our value? Here’s the answer. If a CEO really can quantify the negative costs of a poor reputation, then the converse should be true. Rebuilding reputation has real value. And, according to the report, the majority of those in the C-suite recognise the need to invest in the solution. Over to you.

ESG

The paradox of hush

A theme that emerged from last year’s Corporate Affairs Summit was the danger of silence – or greenhushing - when it came to sustainability initiatives. As Sarah Gillard, CEO of A Blueprint for Better Business, said: silence creates a problem. It is not a neutral position.

Gillard pointed out that organisations respond to the context in which they operate. ‘Social contagion is a thing. If everybody thinks that everybody else is rowing back, then your exec team will be saying, Oh, everyone's rowing back. What should we do? Should we just keep quiet about it because we don't want to create any unnecessary attention?

‘And that silence means that all of the momentum that happens when organisations come together and that sense of coalitions begins to fall away.’

Her fellow panellist Maritz Carvalho, now senior manager, investor relations at Close Brothers, agreed. Anecdotally, an investor had expressed concern about greenhushing, which he viewed as more dangerous than greenwashing. Why? Because greenwashing implies that a statement or claim has been made that can be examined. Greenhushing lacks transparency. Why is a company being silent? Is there a story that isn’t being told?

But a new survey of 218 chief sustainability officers reveals that one in four – 23% – now report that fear of criticism and greenwashing outweighs the fear of inactivity. They would rather do nothing than be slammed for inaccurate statements, no matter how well-intentioned. Meanwhile, 14% of those surveyed said they would struggle to publicly defend claims linked to nature-based projects.

As a result, the survey, which was conducted by Earthly, a provider of nature-based solutions, found that 51% of chief sustainability officers are actively delaying or preventing corporate investment in climate and nature. It is a paradox. Transparency is fast becoming a barrier to progress.