How have we changed: Perspective of the "Corona Promotion"?

In the Covid-19 crisis, companies and the priorities of consumers, customers and citizens have changed significantly. As a result, companies are experiencing an abrupt "adapt or die".

design ORGANIZATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENT/ MELISSA NEALE LANDES

In the Covid-19 crisis, companies and the priorities of consumers, customers and citizens have changed significantly. As a result, companies are experiencing an abrupt "adapt or die".

With the idea of shedding some light on how society has changed and will continue to change, I wanted to carry out an exercise of introspection, as a graduate of the "Corona Promotion", trying to expose how the health crisis has altered and marked our expectations as future workers, investors, customers and citizens.  

As future employees of a business we are willing to work remotely and adapt to flexible schedules. This has been the rule in the pandemic and there are many businesses that have maintained their productivity, achieving cost reduction. We have learned to study remotely, so we are a class familiar with the work telematics and its implications, with the advantage that we know and use online tools as digital natives.

Companies were already looking for agility to adapt to market changes before COVID; and after the abrupt adaptation they have experienced, flexibility has become a priority in recruitment. Therefore, as candidates, we cannot be satisfied with simply adapting to the environment; our ability to learn and adapt must be integrated into our DNA.

As investors, we have redefined the essential companies in the market. While we used to consider various industries as attractive sectors or had different risk criteria, we now know which companies are the ones that don't stop: healthcare, food, transportation and security, among others, are clear examples. Likewise, we now include technology in this list, an industry that we look at with skepticism and how it is still in progress, but of which we have seen the need during this crisis.

As customers, we care about how different companies have responded to the pandemic. How have they been affected? What measures have they taken? How have they cared for the safety of their employees and customers? These are some of the questions we will use as reference letter to evaluate companies. Inevitably, we will be less mercifully critical of high-capacity companies, while we will look with compassion and admiration at resilient, especially hard-hit companies such as restaurants, entertainment or small businesses.

And finally, as citizens we have learned to conjugate the "we" instead of the "I". We have lived in a blindness that made us worry only about ourselves, forgetting to have a collective vision as a society. But COVID-19, in a way, has reminded us that if society is not well, neither will we be well as individuals.

In the last few years of our lives, we have made decisions based on our tastes, preferences or criteria. However, for the first time, we are aware of the consequences of our actions as individuals, for example in the form of figures in the news.

We are privileged, we are not within any risk group , and we have a role core topic for social welfare. May we maintain this same awareness when there is no pandemic. Let us continue to be aware that our ways of acting and thinking can be of financial aid for all.