Sensemaker Daily
On Tuesday, to mark the first quarterly update of our Responsibility 100 Index, we hosted a digital ThinkIn with Mark Read, chief executive of advertising giant WPP. The point of discussion: how businesses can act responsibly during a global pandemic.
Few people are better placed to discuss this than Mark, as WPP counts some of the world’s biggest businesses among its clients. In a climate where both business and consumers are facing unparalleled challenges from Covid-19, questions of corporate responsibility are more important than ever.
More than 200 people logged in on Zoom to join the conversation between Mark and Tortoise’s co-founder, James Harding. Here are the key takeaways.
Most participants agreed that the coronavirus crisis would see business behaviour change for good.
The pandemic would upend the way we work, live, communicate, fly and educate our children, Mark Read said:
WPP itself has told all of its 110,000 people to work from home – whether or not they lived in a country affected by the virus. “I don’t think we can underestimate the impact of the change,” Mark said. “There will be dislocations. Companies will run out of money. A lot of small businesses will find life very tough.” This is a healthcare crisis and a financial crisis, he added. “Balancing those two things is very difficult.”
“Do people really need to be jumping on a plane to do something which could effectively be done [from home]?” Liz Thody asked, suggesting that working from home and travelling less would become habits ingrained in a post-Covid-19 world.
Asad Dhunna agreed. “We’re starting to see people in their homes, warts and all. There’s less of a split between work and life.” Rather than bringing your whole self to work, he said, people were bringing their whole “shelf” to work (with their books viewed in the background of a Zoom call).
Will broader ideas about purpose get “shelved” during the crisis? The general consensus was no: if anything, there is now more pressure on corporations to think more widely than maximising shareholder value.
Charlie Curtis believes that Covid-19 has tipped corporate priorities in favour of societal benefit:
For Martin Rix, the coronavirus shows that the gig economy works “until things go wrong”. He made the excellent point that many of the people on the lowest incomes are now regarded as “key workers” – essential to helping Britain get through the crisis. Covid-19 might lead to a greater acceptance of radical economic ideas like a universal basic income or a four-day week, he said, as well as redefining Britain’s relationship with tax.
Marcia, the head of corporate responsibility for Relx, which finished in the top 20 in the Tortoise R100 index, said her company was going to be hit by the coronavirus “because we have a very large events business”. Even so, Relx was converting a space in Austria to be a temporary hospital. Marcia said that Blackrock, one of their biggest investors, had reiterated that they were “staying the course” on ESG (environmental, social and governance) issues because “it’s helping to determine the long-term viability of companies.”
Will there be anger towards corporations – especially those who lay people off?
Mark said that depends on how business behaves. Companies will have to adjust costs to their revenues. But the way they go about making changes is important. One major uncertainty is the length of the crisis, he said: we don’t know if this is a three month or a one year event.
Giles Gibbons said the decisions made now by business leaders would leave them labelled as a good or a bad business for long after the crisis has abated. Corporate behaviour now “will be remembered for years to come”.
“I do sense there’s a feeling that we’re all in this together,” Mark said. “Like the great leveller. If you’re staying at home, you’re doing your bit.”
The WPP boss said that Covid-19 is a challenge for all companies, large or small. “It may hit home harder for small businesses in the short term, but we have to think about this as a challenge for all businesses.” Greater connectivity between companies globally means that a volatile event is more likely to have a global impact, he added.
Carlyn Greenfield, who has been researching whether crisis drives innovation, pointed out a fascinating stat: that 30 per cent of the awards handed out by the Harvard Innovation Lab had gone to policies that had been developed out of crises.
Bobby Banerjee, another participant, said we should “never waste a crisis”. He pointed to the positives, including decreasing quantities of air pollution. What we need to do now, he said, is re-imagine what the world will look like after Covid-19. “What is the meaning of work?” he said. Could the thousands of volunteers who signed up to help the NHS do that as a permanent occupation, for instance?
Heather McGowan, dialling in from the US, echoed Carlyn’s point about innovation. Something that would have taken a business 5 or 7 years to implement is now happening in 5 or 7 days, she said.
Heather also made the point that, in combating Covid-19, many countries have decided to put their most vulnerable humans first – even before their economy. “The decisions we made; prioritising our elders, our most vulnerable – I find some optimism,” she said.
