Why public institutions struggle with trust
Public institutions are more than aware that they need to (re)build public trust and confidence with service users and communities. Yet despite good intentions and ongoing rhetoric, institutions still struggle with trust, particularly when it comes to their dealing with complex societal problems.
When researchers study trust, they typically identify three distinct components: integrity (the belief that someone adheres to acceptable principles), ability (the competence to do what they say they will do), and benevolence (the extent to which it is believed the person or entity wants a good outcome for the person placing their trust).
Public services have invested heavily in shoring up two of these three legs. Integrity is addressed through codes of conduct, ethics training, accountability frameworks, and public inquiries. Competence is addressed through professional standards, inspections, performance metrics, and league tables. The third leg — benevolence — is typically treated as self-evident. Of course the NHS wants what is best for patients. Of course social services want to protect the vulnerable. Of course universities want to provide the best education for students. The institution exists to serve, so benevolence is assumed.
Yet for many people public institutions have not been benevolent. Instead, for many they have been experienced negatively as surveillance, gatekeeping, and judgement. Compassion, connection, and care have given way to efficiency. Protecting the public has been replaced by protecting the institution. Rebuilding trust, then, in is not just about tightening the screws on integrity and competence, it requires institutions to genuinely embed benevolence in how they operate and hold themselves to account.
But what gets measured, famously, gets done. And with no established mechanism within most public institutions to measure, reward, or even acknowledge benevolence, it is easy to forget. Because the bureaucratic machinery that runs our institutions tends to strip the human from both the service user’s experience and the worker’s. Heart is squeezed out in favour of metrics. A social worker navigating a case management system is not asked to record whether he stayed on the phone an extra twenty minutes because he could hear the fear in someone’s voice. A teacher’s lesson plan does not have a field for the conversation she had at the classroom door that changed a child’s day. These things happen and they matter and they are fundamental to building institutional trust. Yet all too often they are invisible and unrewarded extras to what ‘counts’.
The trust stool has three legs. We have spent a long time polishing two of them while the third has been giving way. If we want to know why public institutions continue to struggle with trust, taking a look at whether benevolence is centred, or just assumed, might not be a bad place to start.
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