How To Measure Trust in a Skeptical World

This article provides a 6-step procedure for measuring and evaluating the trust that constituencies hold in an organization. (You’ll find Katie Paine’s Trust Measurement Checklist a convenient way to organize your trust measurement project.) First, let’s examine some theories of trust, and how it fits into relationships in general. We need to look no further than Chipotle’s plummeting sales to know that trust, or lack thereof, has a measurable effect on the financial health of any organization. Thanks to the economic collapse of 2008, people trust corporations less than at almost any other time in our history. Thus, when trust helps an organization build relationships with key constituencies, it saves that organization money by reducing the costs of litigation, regulation, legislation, pressure campaigns, boycotts, or […]