Finding inspiration in disruption moments: a new era of stakeholder engagement
Remote working and digital communications are not a block in building bridges. They are the bricks that support them. - Full article on IPRA website
Coronavirus is hitting the whole world, spreading waves of covid-19 through countries. The virus knows no borders and is linked to human behaviors. People’s relations changed forever.
The social-cultural and economic paradigm we were living by before will not be reestablished again, whether we like it or not. And it is not only because of the pandemic. The reason is deeper, and it is rooted inside people’s attitude towards everyday life.
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The covid-19 pandemic is shaping a new mindset, new values, new rules and roles of relating with and between people; people and organizations; people and brands.
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We all know the best way to build and maintain relations is in person, but now it is time to change and to move on. Our strength as PR professionals is having a deep knowledge of social sciences. We are expert on how to identify, understand, decode and interpret people and their words, attitude, mood. Now we need to choose the best digital tools to support us in creating maps, profiling (I usually do not like this word, but here it can give the idea of understanding deeply the person you are going to establishing a relation with), and listening to conversations on the topics we are interested in, or our public is.
We are the facilitators of internal communication, making it easy for the C-levels to talk with all the employees, and vice-versa. At the same time, we are the ones who can explain what is going on internally to external audiences, accurately and strategically. As Professor Giampietro Vecchiato, from University of Padua, says, “A company communicates outside what it is inside.”
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I will also add: stakeholders are people. Does it sound obvious? Sometimes, it is not.
Even if there is a screen, an email, a chat, you are still doing the same one-on-one in-person job.
