In these days of obligatory downtime, which provide time to read more calmly and to stop and think, I am left with the following reflection by the British philosopher John Gray: "One advantage of quarantine is that it can be used to renew ideas. Cleansing our minds and thinking about how to live in an altered world is the task before us now. For those of us who are not serving on the front line, this should suffice for the duration of confinement".
And I apply this to my own field by asking myself: does business communication make sense? Over the course of many webinars to what I have been able to attend to in the last few days, I note that communication and journalistic work are becoming more important and more valuable than ever before. With this affirmative answer, the next question that arises is: what will change?
It is more than likely that the globalisation of the last decades will come to an end and that, at least for a while, our way of life linked to permanent and unrestricted mobility will be greatly reduced.. This same globalisation has made us realise that all businesses, large and small, are interdependent.
We will now have less physical contact but our virtual contact has grown exponentially. Technology is helping us and will help us more to live in these confined conditions. The internet is saving us from isolation and allowing us to get on with our lives. The pandemic will reinforce the sense of group and community. In fact, it has already done so. Until now, when we felt invulnerable, it seems that personal autonomy was the most sacred good, but the coronavirus has made security and feeling part of a group the most important thing.
And how does this apply to business communication? The most important thing will be to communicate the corporate purpose well. This crisis, in contrast to that of 2008, has a mixture of fears: economic and existential; in this explosive mix, the most important element for communication will be the employees themselves. They will have to participate in defining or approving this corporate purpose. Now internal communication is gaining ground and if this part does not work perfectly, everything that is done externally will be merely cosmetic and, therefore, an exercise in futility.
Building a company's public image starts from the inside by having a well-defined purpose and employees who support that corporate purpose.
Is there a mechanism to control the business and communication crisis that a tsunami like Covid provokes? The answer is "no". Our companies will now have problems of all kinds, but with a clear purpose and well-aligned employees, the crisis will be less. The coronavirus should lead us to rethink many things as companies and as citizens. In the face of a crisis, companies have a lot to lose: employees, image, credibility, customers... companies must react immediately and ensure that the messages they send out are clear, understandable and coherent with the company's purpose.. Now that we are spending less time in meetings, we need to spend time planning, thinking and crafting our messages. According to the RAE the word "crisis" defines "the decisive moment of a business, serious and with important consequences". We are now living through very complicated times as a society and from a business point of view in which we must reflect on our mission, vision and values. We will have to confirm or reformulate them, but now more than ever, communication makes us more human and therefore better professionals.
This article has been published in the Daily Insurance Bulletin (DIB) from INESE.
Managing Partner of PROA Comunicación