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Communicating Through the Covid Crisis August 2020

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Communicating Through the Covid Crisis August 2020 Communicating through the Covid Crisis August 2020 1 CONTENTS FOREWORD 3 METHODOLOGY 4 THE COMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGES OF COVID-19 5 Rapidly-evolving priorities 6 Universal challenges 8 COPING WITH THE CRISIS: HOW COMMUNICATIONS TEAMS HAVE ADAPTED 9 Multi-skilled teams 10 The art of remote working 11 Batten down the hatches: lessons for the next mega-crisis 12 Internal communications 13 Skills gaps 14 Skilling up in a post-Covid world 15 POST-PANDEMIC COMMUNICATIONS 16 Evolving communications 18 How has Covid-19 impacted corporate purpose? 19 LESSONS FOR AGENCIES AND CONSULTANCIES 20 CONCLUSIONS 21 2 FOREWORD We embarked upon this report to find out about the experiences of in-house communications professionals through the crisis – the challenges they have faced, how they have overcome them, what they have learned and how they have adapted their communications as a result. With the help of VMAGROUP, we surveyed 84 senior in-house communications professionals about their By Emma Kane, experiences to form the basis of this report, which Chief Executive, has been overlaid by advice from some of our Newgate Communications consultants around the most commonly recurring themes and issues faced. I would like to thank VMAGROUP and all those individuals who took From early on in the Covid-19 pandemic it was the time to participate in the survey and share their clear that communications professionals were thoughts and experiences. going to face some sizeable challenges. In times such as these the job of an in-house communicator can be a lonely one. Our aim in Many of these, of course, are not particular to the compiling this report is to share the experiences and communications profession. Threats to the health lessons learned by contemporaries and hopefully of individuals and their loved ones have affected provide some inspiration for communicators as they people of all professions – many of them much and their businesses look forward to the next chapter. more seriously than the average communications practitioner. Difficulties caused by struggling For while this pandemic has brought myriad employers, redundancies, furloughs and having to communications challenges, I have seen within our work remotely have also been commonplace. own organisation and within those of our clients that it has also acted as a catalyst for improving important But communicators have also faced challenges skillsets; brought out some innovative thinking and particular to our profession, many of which will be creative solutions; and made organisations reflect entirely new to them. From managing a lightning- more deeply on how they behave and how they paced crisis in the early days of the pandemic to communicate. communicating with worried employees estranged from their colleagues and the workplace, in-house I hope you find it useful and that it can contribute, in communications teams have found themselves at the however small a way, to helping your teams exit the epicentre of their organisations’ battle to stay on top pandemic stronger. of the emerging crisis and all its many arms and legs. Emma Kane And these communications challenges have been compounded by all the common difficulties faced by so many during lockdown. 3 METHODOLOGY This report was written based on research carried out online in May 2020 by Newgate Research amongst in-house communications professionals. A total of 84 professionals1 completed the survey between 6th May and 27th May 2020. Two-thirds (65%) of respondents were Director or Head of Team level; 25% were senior-level managers; and the remaining 10% were mid-level managers. Respondents came from organisations in a wide variety of business sectors including finance & insurance; manufacturing and production; retail; health; professional, scientific and technical; construction; information and communication; wholesale; accommodation and food services; arts, entertainment, recreation and other services. Respondents work for businesses with a wide range of experiences of the pandemic. 14% said their business had financially been badly or very badly impacted compared to 61% who had suffered a minor or moderate impact, and just 10% whose organisation had been positively impacted by the crisis. 1 Base sizes are reported for each question. Not all questions were answered by all 84 respondents. Note also that percentages won’t always add up to 100% due to rounding. 4 THE COMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGES OF COVID-19 The coronavirus pandemic has posed a Internal communications was the next most wide variety of challenges to professional commonly cited challenge, named by four in five communicators. respondents (80%). More people named internal communications as ‘very challenging’ than any Of the eight specific areas of communications other discipline (25%). mentioned in the survey, at least half the respondents said seven of them had been 72% of respondents said crisis communications challenging. and issues management posed a challenge; and 61% said they had experienced difficulty in The area most regularly identified as a influencing senior management on key decisions challenge to communicators was managing with communications implications. This was the the overall communications strategy, named second most likely category to be named ‘very by an overwhelming 87% of respondents. challenging’, cited as such by 23% of respondents. TABLE 1: COMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGES OF THE PANDEMIC2 Managing our overall Internal Crisis Influencing senior Managing social Public affairs (n 41) Financial Supplier comms strategy communications communications / management on media (n 48) communications or communications Manag(n 67)ing our overall (n 53)Internal issues managementCrisis key Influendecisionscing with seni or Managing social investorFinancia relationsl (n Supplie45) r comms strategy communications communic(n 57) ations / communicationsmanagement on media (n 48) communic(n 32) ations or communications (n 67) (n 53) issues managementimplications key decis (nions 52) with investor relations (n 45) (n 57) communications (n 32) implications (n 52) Very challenging Quite challenging Not a challenge at all Very challenging Quite challenging Not a challenge at all 2 Q2 In terms of communications, which of the following have you found challenging? Please respond for all types of communications relevant to your Team. Note base sizes varied between n 32-67. 5 Rapidly-evolving priorities At the outset of the crisis, communications departments were forced to adapt the regular focus of their work in a very short space of time and in some cases, significantly increase the time and effort they put into communicating with a given audience. Overwhelmingly, communications professionals’ attentions were diverted much more heavily into internal communications, as businesses dealt with the challenges of employee sickness and myriad concerns over safety, job security, financial welfare and new ways of working. Almost nine out of ten respondents (86%) increased their level of focus on employees during the pandemic compared to beforehand, and around three-quarters of these gave employee communications ‘significantly’ more focus. “Employees have been the real focus,” said one The challenges of the furlough scheme have respondent, “winning their trust early that we evolved as time has gone on and some weren’t asking them to choose between money employees have come back into their roles. or health. Having got that right we’ve been able to ask for - and receive - unprecedented “It has been a challenging time balancing the degrees of flexibility.” communications needs of various audiences but the particular challenge is communicating The Government’s employee furlough scheme to furloughed staff,” explained one respondent. posed additional challenges for in-house “The significant challenge from this is managing communicators. the various reactions to being furloughed once staff are back in role.” “Communicating with a furloughed workforce is essential but raised some practical challenges,” said one respondent, while another explained the importance of “keeping people informed, feeling connected and sharing ideas.” 6 Clients and customers were the other While ‘over-communicating’ is a good principle clear beneficiary of a heightened level of to follow in a complex, fast-moving crisis of this communications, with three in four respondents nature, it also brings challenges of its own. One (75%) increasing their level of focus on this respondent raised the issue of the information audience since the onset of the crisis. overload facing one of their key audiences, local authorities: While it would be reasonable to assume that businesses would decrease the level of “The pressure on them is immense and communications to some audiences to balance therefore we have to be succinct with our out the increased focus on priority audiences comms.” such as employees and customers, this does not appear to have been the case. Every single Consistency of information was another raised audience category named, including media, by communicators. “All stakeholder groups regulators, investors and parent companies, was have remained important, so maintaining a given a net increase in focus, suggesting that level of consistent messaging and stakeholder the overall level of communications produced by care has been an integral part of our plans,” businesses increased by a substantial amount. explained one respondent. TABLE 2: CHANGES IN THE LEVEL OF COMMUNICATIONS FOCUS ON DIFFERENT AUDIENCES DURING THE PANDEMIC COMPARED
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