It’s March 16th and the clock at Wembley stands at 94 minutes. Newcastle United haven’t won a domestic trophy for more than 70 years and have just conceded a late goal in the latest in a long and forlorn series of doomed attempts.
by Ross Wigham
It would be easy to panic at this point but the players and fans alike had to fall back on that most elemental and biblical of feelings….trust.
The dictionary defines trust as “the firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something” and it’s been something in short supply over the past decade or so.
We’ve seen an almost absolute collapse in public trust in traditional institutions including government, policing, charity and healthcare. The infamous “sick of experts” line encapsulating a low point in how the public mood has come to distrust those that society once venerated.
There’s no doubt that Trust is the key battleground in public sector communications right now. It’s hard enough to get your message out there in such a fragmented media landscape but even if you do will people even trust it?
According to things like the Edelman trust barometer we have a bit of an advantage in healthcare with Doctors and Nurses among the most trusted professions globally, but it’s been a long time since we stood on doorsteps banging pans for the NHS.
In fact the latest national figures show public perception levels with the NHS are at an all time low with just 21% of the people satisfied with services.
In corporate communications and engagement perhaps we’ve been measuring the wrong things?
About 18 months ago we stripped back our communications strategy to focus on a simple mantra:
Building positive relationships, reputation and trust.
As part of this we started using a regular dashboard approach to understand and measure citizen sentiment, emotion, opinion and crucially trust.
In reality this has meant a move away from some of the more shiny campaigns and established ways of working to focus more on the day to day grind of building and maintaining trust.
This might be controversial but I’ve come to realise that the one thing missing from most public relations at the moment is 'the public'. My career started with the rise of social and digital and we’ve rightly put much focus there, but I’m sensing a shift now as it becomes so much more fragmented and polarised.
As we’ve come out of covid we’ve put much more value on things like community conversations and world café events talking directly with local people. The return to face to face engagement feels liberating and refreshing.
We’ve also been harnessing other groups and organisations to help deliver our messages. That has included sports teams, volunteers, our charity and other local interest groups.
One of the key tests of our new strategy was going through the Communications Management Standard with the PRCA. An independent set of standards demonstrated we were serious about things like planning, evaluation, performance, management, leadership, finance and value for money.
If comms and PR as a function wants to become a serious management function and strategic organisational partner, then we must collectively start thinking much more about some of these wider issues.
Since we’ve started measuring trust we have regularly achieved more than 90% and in our own local version of the NHS public perception survey we scored 78% (more than 50% above the national score).
However we know this fluctuates when local services such as A&E struggle, so it’s a constant battle but for now we’ll comfort ourselves with the first trophy for 70 years and enjoy it while it lasts.
Ross Wigham is an award-winning communications director
*Sign up for the comms2point0 eMag*
The comms2point0 eMag features exclusive new content, free give-aways, special offers, first dibs on new events and much, much more.
Sound good? Join over 3.8k other comms people who have subscribed. You can sign up to it right here
