It’s time for comms and sustainability to shift from colleagues to allies

The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.

An interesting contradiction has emerged in recent years: businesses increasingly list trust building as a strategic goal, but communications and sustainability — the functions often tasked with this work — remain misunderstood, under-resourced and lacking the influence to shape key decisions in their respective mandates. 

A key example is the ongoing debate about where communications and sustainability should sit in an organizational chart. If trust is central to a business’ long-term success, why do the teams who steward its reputation and build its ethical frameworks rarely report to the CEO? 

Trust is the murkiest part of the intangible economy — the social and political realm of ideas, expertise, data, brands and networks. Everyone recognizes its importance in fostering a strong workplace culture and a loyal customer base, but, like irony, it’s easier to feel than describe or quantify. This might be why one of the biggest reputational risks organizations now face is the “financialization of trust,” where trust is prescribed as a directive, goal or metric, often in response to complex social, political and economic issues. 

Trust is an outcome, not a goal

In reality, trust is built when organizations adhere to their values and ethical frameworks in different contexts over time. This requires slow, intentional, long-term systems thinking. “Sponsoring this farmers’ market will build trust” is a common way of expressing the financialization of trust,  where a more productive statement would be “sponsoring this farmers’ market reinforces who we are, what we do, and what we stand for.” It may look like a subtle difference on the surface, but this shift — reactive tactics to a more systemic, outcome-based approach  — empowers communications and sustainability teams to act as true strategic partners in social impact, risk mitigation and reputation stewardship. 

Another example of the financialization of trust is the common scenario where communications and sustainability professionals unveil annual reports or press releases into a labyrinth of approvals and receive a final product that has substantive changes in clarity, accountability and impact. For example, words describing systemic power inequities may be replaced with vague references to inclusion, and time-bound climate initiatives might be repositioned as aspirational goals. What changes and why offers unique insight into a given organization’s corridors of power and the degree to which trust is embedded within a broader ethical framework or is tacked on as a decorative layer that’s synonymous with a metric-based notion of brand or reputation.

The financialization of trust tends to show up in organizations that don’t fully appreciate the fact that they’re open social systems. This leads to a dangerous overestimation of the degree to which they’re the arbiters of their social license to operate. Operating as an island that’s immune to the external environment may appear to work in the short term, but a business’ social license to operate isn’t something you can occasionally renew or top up with a cheerful sustainability report or adding emojis to a LinkedIn post. The Target-Costco continuum, where the former organization abandoned its DEI commitments and the latter refused to cave to politically-motivated pressures, reminds us that a social license to operate is continually earned and can be summarily revoked through actual or perceived missteps.  

Given this current reality, how can communications and sustainability teams work together to shape key decisions, influence strategy and position trust as an outcome of long-term thinking, clarity and intent?

Closing the trust gap 

Communications and sustainability teams devote significant physical and emotional labor to the development of organizational trust, and this can be deflating when it’s positioned as the point of the work rather than an outcome of ethical business practices substantiated by strategic corporate and public affairs actions.  

The good news is that communications and sustainability teams have the opportunity to form strategic partnerships to support each other and foster greater understanding of what they do and how they add value. Sustainability brings systems thinking to the table — the ability to assess externalities and think long term — and communications can facilitate the move away from reactive, ad hoc messaging by building a strong organizational narrative infrastructure. 

The most important thing we can do is to work together to identify the gaps or inconsistencies between an organization’s vision, purpose and strategy. This means slowing down and asking better questions when receiving requests to plan or communicate an initiative that’s positioned as a trust-building opportunity. These questions can include:

• How does this initiative support our corporate purpose and strategy?
• How does this initiative support or alter organizational decision making? 
• What are the ethical frameworks that have informed the development of this initiative?  
• Will this initiative make sense in one year or five years? 
• Are we prepared to stand by this initiative if political winds or market conditions change?

We can also be more accountable in how we communicate. This means adopting a plain-language policy for all communications, from emails to annual reports, to weed out the overreliance on vague promises, self-serving puffery and elitist jargon. Clear writing signals clear thinking — key ingredients to building long-term trust. 

Assessing tradeoffs is critical in communications and sustainability. It’s not realistic to take on every battle, but developing a collaborative framework to articulate who they are, what they do, and how they add value is an important step. While this may feel uncomfortable or potentially be received as pushing back, it’s in the best interest of organizations to ensure that their sustainability and communications teams are empowered to act as strategic partners, not the good news post office.