Last month, Deloitte polled 286 C-suite executives with a simple question: Does your organization have a chief trust officer (CTrO) role?
The results show that more companies are accepting trust as a core business responsibility, but that the trend still has a long way to go.
According to Deloitte’s data, 8% of respondents do, which is a significant increase over last year’s 2.7%, while 4.9% of enterprises intend to create a CTrO position in the next year. A further 29% say a different C-suite executive either already is or will soon be tasked with handling trust. That leaves 36% claiming that no one “owns trust” at their organization and that the company has no plans to change that.
I talked with Michael Bondar, a principal leading Deloitte's Future of Trust initiative, to get more insight on how the role of CTrO is growing.
Not just CISOs
Most CTrOs have grown out of positions in data and cybersecurity, like chief information security officers. Bondar says that while the “overwhelming majority of the trust officers” still focus largely on that same area, he thinks their “scope is widening.”
“I think there's a greater recognition that this role cannot thrive in a silo, and that the more a company is intentional about growing those connection points [between trust and other business areas], the more likely the organization to be successful,” Bondar says.
Not just CTrOs
Another evolution is that the people placed in charge of trust are not always formalized as CTrOs. Certainly there’s growing recognition of the importance of trust as a business value but, as each company determines what trust means to its own enterprise, establishing a CTrO might not be the best fit.
However, leaving trust in the hands of a different executive has more potential pitfalls than appointing a dedicated officer. Bondar says if another executive is given responsibility for trust, it’s important that trust doesn’t become a “side item” to their other priorities.
“This needs to be a primary focus, as opposed to an afterthought, and this leader needs to be equipped and empowered to drive proper change in the organization,” Bondar says.
Not just shareholders
In 2019, the business community declared a seismic shift in corporate values when the Business Roundtable announced an end to shareholder primacy. Corporations now, the Roundtable swore, had to consider their responsibility to all stakeholders—customers, employees, society—rather than the ones sharing their profits.
Bondar hints at the rise of stakeholder capitalism as one reason why “trust” is now a benchmark for business in a way it wasn’t before.
“I think it's created an environment where every stakeholder matters, and their opinions, views, and perspectives are interconnected. These interconnected relationships have become part of the reason why trust is so important because a breakdown of trust with any one group can have an impact on another,” Bondar says.
Not just a fad
The last point to make is that this trend toward trust is not a passing fad or another buzzword pushed out by marketers. “This is absolutely a trend of the future,” Bondar says. “And I think that focus on this topic will only further continue to grow as we see all these things evolving and advancing.”
Eamon Barrett
eamon.barrett@fortune.com
