Forceful and with very clear ideas, Laura González-Molero, President of the Asociación para el Progreso de la Dirección (APD)discusses in this interview with Proa Communication the economic crisis that the containment measures put in place by the coronavirus are going to unleash in Spain. He admits that if in March the priority was "to confront a pandemic in which we were overwhelmed from the health point of view", now, when we are already in a second phase, "we have the challenge of finding solutions so as not to stop the country, so that the activity of our companies continues, because otherwise the impact is going to be enormous".
The IMF projects an economic recession for Spain of 81 QAR3T (3.61 QAR3T for the world).In his opinion, there is only one way forward: "to work on what we are calling the new normal". Once "we know and have processes in place to protect the health of our employees, we have to work on ensuring that our business model, with the modifications and adjustments necessary for the situation in which we find ourselves, continues to be active". And the key to this is "understanding our customers very well, being very close to them and making them feel that we are more present than ever", because otherwise, in his opinion, the greatest risk would be a triple crisis: one of demand, another of supply and the last one of finance, which would lead to a serious unemployment situation.
For González-Molero, what is crucial now is to "to get the best out of ourselves, to understand how we can help our clients, what new mechanisms and tools we have to use".. He believes that if there is one thing that all companies have advanced in this crisis, it is digitisation. An advance that, he says, "we had not achieved in the last year". All of this has materialised in providing "tools and material to our employees so that they can telework and automate processes to ensure that they do not stop, because the priority is to maintain the activity and to do so, moreover, with creative solutions".
He believes it is absolutely essential that consumption does not slow down. "We need a strong demand (for products) that allows us to stimulate companies, especially SMEs, which is the sector that will suffer most, and we have to make a big effort to support our companies and buy from our producers, farmers and livestock farmers to help the local economy in the short and medium term (and I don't like nationalism or limiting markets, he adds)" in these times of exceptional difficulty. This is the only way, he says, that will allow "some of the jobs and supply generation to be maintained, because this will slow down the economy, but at a slower rate". "We will not be able to prevent an economic recession, but we can, through our individual behaviour, prevent the economy from grinding to a halt.he adds.
Laura González-Molero does not forget to underline how Spanish society is demonstrating its human quality and its generosity. "Millions of people and entrepreneurs are making great efforts, providing the most vulnerable groups with solutions and, at the same time, generating work so that their employees are not unemployed, even if it is not economically profitable or does not reflect positively on the bottom line.
Asked whether the digitalisation initiated by some companies will be abandoned when we reach a moment of certain normality, the president of the APD is categorical: "everything that companies have evolved in digitalisation has no way back" and it will be in this way because, in her opinion, "we have been surprised at how much more effective and efficient we can be by not wasting time travelling or in meetings". "I believe that the benefits and positive lessons learned from this crisis will remain over time, as businessmen, workers and society have learned that the face-to-face approach makes no sense," he says.
Thanks to this crisis, "we have become more efficient and we have improved our ability to use technologies... We have done accelerated training in technologies to be more efficient in our work". And this is obviously not at odds with personal contact, but it is true that the normality that will come will not be "the same as in the past", because "life, the ecosystem evolves". In this sense, he stresses that "In the new normality that is going to be in place, I think digitalisation will continue to be a very important pillar..
She also points out that "we are going to have to work in a different way to ensure that in this new normality we have a fairer, more collaborative, more generous society, in which public-private collaboration, collaboration between employees and companies, collaboration between companies and between institutions and organisations of any ownership is a reality". According to the president of the APD, we must not forget that "the model of society that Spain, Europe and the world want for the 21st century is at stake".
Regarding the leadership required in this time of crisis and uncertainty, González-Molero believes that it must be based on transparency, teamwork, collaboration and effort, a value that had been lost and that has been recovered in the current situation. "We are going to have to set examples of generosity and, in fact, there have already been many managers who have reduced their salaries or given up their bonuses," he stresses.
The president of the APD believes that an employers' pact with the government is essentialHe added that the key to rebuilding the new normality is "trust, credibility and honesty". Only with these ingredients, which are the ones that countries such as South Korea, Portugal and Germany itself have used, "will we achieve cooperation from everyone, from across the political spectrum, from business and from the private world".
Biography of Laura González-Molero
Chairman of APD and Independent Director of Bankia S.A., Viscofan S.A., Acerinox S.A. and Ezentis S.A., he was Chairman of Calidad Pascual SL until July 2016, which has given him in-depth knowledge of various sectors such as infrastructure, industrial, financial and consumer goods in listed and unlisted companies operating in Spain and internationally. He has extensive experience in the area of Appointments, Remuneration, Audit and Corporate Social Responsibility as a member of these Committees. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of ISS and until December 2019 of the Board of Trustees of the Adecco Foundation. Member of the PwC Directors' Club, the WCD (Woman Corporate Directors) and the ICA.
Barbara Yuste
Head of the Digital Area of Proa Comunicación