According to the BBC’s live updates on 29 April 2020, the UN has assessed that 1.5bn workers are at risk of having their livelihoods destroyed. The Situation as it Stands Certain countries are beginning to ease their restrictions slowly in order to preserve their economies, but great damage has already been done. But based on current trends, combined with over 30 years of experience consulting some of the world’s top professionals, here are the impacts you can potentially expect the workforce to face, and some advice for how you can overcome it. It’s very difficult to predict with any certainty what the future holds. Others may unfortunately have no business or job to return to in the short term. This pandemic may have forever reshaped the way that business is conducted, with many organisations adopting new technologies or normalising remote work. It is still uncertain when our lives will regain some semblance of normalcy, and what “normal” will look like. Some of the biggest impacts have been economic, as social distancing and government regulations have caused trading to cease for so many businesses, the consequences of which are likely to be felt for many years to come. In the short amount of time since the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak began and rapidly spread across the globe, we’ve experienced massive shifts in the way we live and work. But here we are, living in a world that is (almost) completely locked down. Three months ago, we never would have dreamed that the majority of people would be working from home, that we wouldn’t be able to nip to the shops for nonessentials, or that we couldn’t gather with friends and families. Instead, their customers and partners watched competitors such as Morrisons, Tesco, M&S and Sainsbury’s introduce better policies and take better care of their staff. If any chain should have been going above and beyond for their staff, it should have been them.
But what made it worse was that Waitrose is a ‘partner-owned’ company, and has centred their entire ethos on their people. Any mistreatment of these workers would have caused anger. For starters, it happened at a time when supermarket workers were at the front line of a raging global pandemic, working heavier shifts, and dealing with customer rushes and panic buying. There are a few reasons why this earned negative attention. A solid example from early on in the pandemic comes from supermarket chain Waitrose, who introduced- and later reversed - a policy that would require their staff to make up any work hours they spent self-isolating. Tough choices had to be made, and a lot of these came with backlash and criticism. So what does this look like in practice? How can you get it right? What Getting It Wrong Looks Like Coronavirus has been difficult for businesses, their staff, and consumers alike. You do, however, need to make sure your words match your actions 365 days a year and not just when it’s trending. You don’t have to be a certified B-corp or a not-for-profit organisation to want to do better and make a positive impact on the world around you. We’ve been made to see just how purposeful today’s consumers are and-spoiler alert-the answer is - very. I admittedly lack Katie’s many years of executive expertise, but as a PR professional, a member of one of the most socially conscious generations to date, and an everyday consumer, it’s been very interesting to watch businesses navigate these complex issues. In that time, we’ve been presented with loads of examples of those ideas in action. All the ideas in that post are extremely important and relevant, but a lot has changed since January. Back in January, our CEO Katie wrote a fantastic blog about the importance of corporate purpose and adopting a stakeholder mindset.
In fact, most of the time the backlash comes from disconnects between the message and the organisation’s everyday activities. Failures in these attempts aren’t always caused by the messages themselves.
Communicating in a crisis is never an easy feat, but when you’re navigating incredibly important topics such as health & safety and racial injustice, it becomes an even slipperier slope. The past several months have presented many organisations with challenges to their purpose statements.