The Edelman trust barometer was released last week, it’s the 13th annual survey of trust and credibility within businesses and governments. It shows that business is at it’s highest level of trust since 2007, the increase is only a marginal 4% from 2007 but what is remarkable is the increase of 9% over 2012.

Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Group, advises that to become more trusted, organisations and businesses should develop programmes that fulfil a societal need at the same time as selling products, he citied Unilever’s Lifebuoy hand washing day activity as an example. We worked with Unilever to produce Waterworks a associated campaign which was the first Facebook timeline application for charitable giving that allows users to help provide clean drinking water to communities in need.

The media industries figure large within the report and social media shows a 41% global trust level. It also examines whom we accept as a trusted source with peer-to-peer (a person like yourself) at 61% with only academics and technical experts being ranked higher.

It’s good news for the technology industry as the survey showed that they are the most trusted of all businesses. Unsurprisingly banks have remained the least trusted organisations, but even taking that into consideration they are still trusted more than governments in 16 of the 26 markets surveyed.

The report highlights 16 attributes to building trust and breaks it down in 5 performance clusters of Engagement, Integrity, Products and Services, Purpose and Operations.  The top ranked is Engagement with listening to customer’s needs and feedback as the highest placed attribute.  Taking these attributes into account, we would say that to build trust and credibility, first engage with your customers.

This year the report received a staggering 31,000 responses from 26 countries and it gives a clear picture on how the public perceive the integrity of businesses, the media and governments.

Do you agree with the findings?, Are Technology and Media companies more trustworthy than Banks?