Other parts of this series:
The fourth industrial revolution and the prominent role digital trust will play in it were among the key subjects earlier this year at the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum at Davos.
“As the people pour into this small ski town today, the discussions among the lanyard-wearing delegates at the coffee shops and hotel lobbies off of the Promenade at the Congress Centre Davos seem to come down to one word: trust,” Tom Patterson noted in Information Age.
Global leaders know that the fourth industrial revolution is radically transforming the way the world works and lives. They also know that trust is the mandatory gate to responsible innovation, shared prosperity and human responsibility. Trust is the critical currency of the digital economy because when it erodes, it impedes progress and momentum.
Accenture Strategy’s Competitive Agility Index shows that losing any stakeholder’s trust has a disproportionate impact on competitiveness. Our 2018 analysis revealed that more than half (54 per cent) of the companies we examined experienced a material drop in trust at some point during the past two and half years. And, the average company that experienced a drop in trust also saw its Competitive Agility Index score decline by two points. For every point dropped, significant revenues are at stake. The index measures trust from the perspectives of six stakeholder groups: customers, employees, suppliers, media, analysts and investors.
Furthermore, Accenture’s recent report, “Decoding Organizational DNA,” shows that, globally, US$3.1 trillion of future revenue growth is at stake for large companies, depending on how their workforce data strategies affect employee trust. Companies that put in place responsible data strategies could see revenue growth up to 12.5 per cent higher than that of companies that fail to adopt responsible data strategies.
Doing so requires a new set of principles and frameworks for building trust. It is not just about data governance—it’s about the new frontier for trust and a key part of the people proposition and performance. When trust is not at the forefront of decisions, leaders expose themselves to risks that prevent them from harnessing disruption and reinventing their organisations.
When trust is strengthened, employees are elevated, valued and feel safe, the organisation is agile, resilient and primed for growth.
In my next post, I’ll take a closer look at how trust impacts the wider digital journey of FS firms.
To find out more about the value of trust in the workplace and how to manage employee data and digital trust, please contact me here, or @andyyoungACN.
To learn more, register to download: Decoding Organizational DNA.
