As we tiptoe towards the end of what can only be described as a life-changing year, it’s impossible not to stop and think about how much the media industry has been transformed. In some cases, the landscape has changed beyond recognition and this evolution shows no sign of stopping. […]

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With travel on pause for many this year and consumer sentiment around future travel fluctuating daily due to the consistent rise in COVID-19 cases globally, travel brands have been tasked with remaining relevant while also being mindful.

In July of this year, our client Chase and Marriott Bonvoy conducted a study that found most respondents (85%) anticipate traveling domestically in the next year. In addition, nearly half (43%) said they would stay in a hotel before the end of the year. This optimism around travel shows that demand and desire are still there – so what is the most effective way to reach these consumers who are beginning to travel this holiday season or start making plans to rebook a canceled/postponed trip?

Travel brands that have risen to the top throughout the pandemic have succeeded in meeting the consumer where they are right now: at home. Focusing on keeping travel close to home may sound counterintuitive as travel brands often root themselves in helping the consumer escape, but with consumers’ needs shifting, the brands that performed best are those that pivoted to meet these new needs. Here are ways that travel brands continue to stand-out amidst the current travel climate:

Quick Reactions and Helpful Pivots 

This year saw airline and lodging/hotel companies offer essential workers free flights and stays, and cruise ships converted into medical facilities. Travel companies that found timely ways to help those most affected and actively participate in the COVID-19 response have remained a part of the conversation.

Rewarding Consumers 

Since the onset of the pandemic, many consumers saw milestones canceled, ranging from weddings and honeymoons to graduations. The brands that stepped up to help reward these consumers with surprise and delight events, monetary prizes, etc., which they could use to celebrate from the safety and comfort of their own homes, earned positive recognition from consumers and media.

Optimism Meets Realism 

A focus on future travel and travel planning allows consumers to whet their appetites for travel without promoting travel outwardly at a time when many may still feel uneasy and many health officials caution against it. Brands that encourage optimism but remain realistic show consumers that the brand’s focus and commitment to consumers’ safety are genuine. It also acknowledges that we will travel again and highlights the benefits of planning travel with loved ones at home before we’re ready to get back out there.

With COVID-19 cases continuing to rise and colder weather in much of the country pushing more activities indoors, U.S. employers may not be rushing to recall employees who have been working from home back into the workplace. But whether maintaining the status quo or making changes to work arrangements, employers will benefit from considering the following guidance as the colder months pose new challenges for employers and employees alike.

1. Ask for employee input.

Much has happened since COVID-19 began disrupting the way we live and work in the spring. If a change in working arrangements is on the horizon for your organization, socialize the plan or plan options with your employees, as their opinions on working in proximity to one another, customers or business partners may have evolved as well. Whether you conduct a survey or speak with workers directly, take this opportunity to hear what’s on their minds and give them a voice, which can establish trust and build rapport. Ask about their preferences and biggest concerns, their thoughts on timing or particular approaches you are considering, ideas they have to improve the process and what might be keeping them up at night.

2. Examine your time-off policy.

Your employees may be sitting on more unused vacation days than typical for this time of year, which could disrupt your business at the end of the year if everyone takes time off for the holidays. Placing limitations on the use of vacation days to maintain business continuity may be necessary for the health of your business, but it is likely to be an unpopular decision and will require smart communications. If you don’t typically allow employees to roll unused days over to the following year but decide to do that this year, determine – and communicate – now whether that will become a permanent benefit or will be a one-time occurrence. Not setting those expectations now has potential to create an employee satisfaction/engagement challenge next year if that benefit later is withdrawn.

3. Think about the holidays.

How employees spend their time away from work could present challenges for organizations with employees working onsite. With the approaching holidays, which typically see families and friends gathering in person, consider a communication from your CEO encouraging employees to stay safe while enjoying their deserved time off. If your organization intends to ask employees about their holiday activities or screen them differently upon their return, communicate that ahead of time.

4. Highlight open enrollment.

If your annual enrollment window for 2021 employee benefits remains open, point out the cost-saving potential of health saving accounts (HSAs) and flexible spending accounts (FSAs) in your benefits communications. With reported virus cases increasing every day, more and more workers will be facing increased medical bills, and these benefits can help offset expenses and ease concerns. Additionally, with more Americans out of work now than a year ago, more people may need to provide coverage for their significant others or dependents for the first time. This may call for a more careful review of benefits plan options than usual to ensure a comprehensive understanding of what is covered and what is not. If your organization hosts a benefits fair in partnership with your benefits administrator, encourage the administrator to underscore these points and offer related guidance for your employees.

5. Continue promoting mental health and wellness.

COVID-19 has impacted the health and wellbeing of people everywhere, and not just among those who have tested positive for the virus. Its indirect effects – including financial uncertainty, lack of interpersonal contact, child and senior care challenges – have caused significant distress among millions of people. The holidays, which are a stressful time for many people, are likely to exacerbate the situation, as will the lack of social connection for some employees living and working alone at home during the colder months. This makes it all the more important for employers to support the mental health of their workers. Continue to promote the services offered by your EAP and other health and wellness benefits, and encourage managers to check in on employees and offer them support.

6. Evaluate your performance management process.

If you didn’t adjust your performance management process this year to accommodate for pandemic impacts, consider whether you need to do so for the next review period to ensure employees have an equitable review experience. Take a look at your performance review framework, including timing and the evaluation criteria used in your materials, both for employees and managers. Pay close attention to requirements out of sync with other policy updates you have made, such as changes in attendance or time-off policies. If you make changes to your performance review framework or guidance, consider a webinar or other communications to highlight those changes to your people.

7. Maintain leader presence.

Even though we are several months into the pandemic, the need for senior leaders to stay visible remains just as imperative today as ever. If your leaders have not been communicating with employees on an ongoing basis, now is the time to engage. Whether sharing next year’s strategic plan, expressing gratitude for employee efforts around the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday or reflecting on your employees’ achievements in the face of adversity to close out the year, there are plenty of opportunities to connect with workers now … and commit to ongoing communications in the coming year.

8. Build a community.

If you haven’t already, consider using your internal collaboration/social platform to launch a virtual community where employees can share experiences and ideas, and offer support to one another with virtual learning ideas, solutions for safely celebrating the holidays or other topics. To forge stronger connections between leaders and employees, encourage executives to participate and share their own experiences, being careful that their contributions aren’t insensitive to workers who may have had to make bigger sacrifices at the hands of the pandemic.

9. Equip your managers with resources.

Managers are employees’ most trusted source of information. In conjunction with updates from leaders or your corporate communications team, remember to equip managers with resources and additional background to help them amplify communications and provide local context and support for their teams. Empower them to collect employee feedback and share it with company leaders, as appropriate.

In May, when TRUE Global Intelligence (TGI), the in-house research practice of FleishmanHillard, surveyed 500 Americans and 500 Brits currently working at home, the pandemic in those countries was still young, with lockdowns still in effect in many places since March and many still learning what the new normal meant for them.

I recall a client, Robert, with two school-aged children, waxing rhapsodic about being home with his kids during the workday and realizing how much of their lives he was missing out on, especially those golden childhood hours between school and dinnertime when they were most excited to share their day and play away the energy stored up from sitting at a desk. The client didn’t want to go back, he said, to how it was before, a full-time dad who nonetheless mostly saw his kids evenings and weekends because, like most office workers, he was tied to his desk and devices.

Most of the remote workers who participated in our survey feel the same way:

• 80% feel less tired, healthier, more human, or more connected to their family since beginning remote work;
• 75% report working from home for so long made them realize the things they were missing out on before;
• And 56% — including 62% of executives and senior managers, a higher proportion than non-managers — believe the relationship between work and life was broken before the pandemic.

Asked about the future, our survey respondents were not interested in a return to a pre-pandemic work-life relationship. What they wanted instead was a dialogue, not just between themselves and their employers but across society:

• 80% are enjoying the time they are spending with their family and want to do everything they can to keep it;
• 62% don’t want to go back to how they balanced work and life before the pandemic;
• 94% see a need for a dialogue between management and employees to set expectations for one another based on what’s been learned during the pandemic;
• And 91% believe we should take this opportunity to have a true discussion as a society about how work and life should coexist moving forward.

It’s now six months later, we’re well into Q4. The suspended quality of time during the pandemic will, hopefully, give way sometime in 2021 to a vaccine, and though it will not be a silver bullet, we’ll surely find time suddenly short as we approach something like the return to public life we yearn for.

Between now and then, TGI is ready to help clients think through the tough questions that will determine how we as employers, employees and society balance work and life in the next normal:

• What have we learned about running our businesses? What have we learned about running our lives? What were we missing before? What was extraneous? What do we need and not need to reach our business and personal goals?
• How do we ensure all voices are heard with an equal opportunity to impact policy decisions? How can we facilitate genuine, authentic dialogue?
• What is it that we want out of the work-life relationship in our next normal? How do we avoid letting ourselves default to the previous ways of doing that didn’t work for most employees and go about making deliberate choices to create the relationship we want?

These are hard questions, and the easiest answer is to avoid them entirely, assuming the next normal will coalesce on its own into “the way things are” just like the old normal. But the old normal didn’t work, and future-forward companies have already begun recrafting policies and expectations that will become the standard against which other companies are judged as they seek to retain and attract talent.

In recent months, our world has turned outside in and the effect of the pandemic on our lives has been substantial. Meeting rooms have turned into video conferences, planned vacations are trips to the park. Life as we knew it was put on pause and switched to another channel at the same time. It is without surprise that recent events are leading to domino effects on our relationships, not just with one another, but with our expectations of brands and societal issues.

Across key topics including healthcare, discrimination and racial equality, the world is beginning to ask more from brands and organisations. With only so much being possible to do at home and with a new view on the fragility of life, consumers have raised their expectations of what brands should do during this time. Seventy-two percent of global consumers say discrimination, equality and racism is the most important issue and 59% expect companies to take a stand on it. Either most of us aren’t doing enough, or we aren’t doing enough to show the world what it is we’re doing.

Ingrained into this issue is the unenviable question of a brand’s purpose and authenticity and their relationship with the ambition of commerce and growth. It’s a relationship that has become more sensitive than ever, with brands not just being punished for not doing enough but also doing too much in the wrong space and at the wrong time. Any posturing and virtue signaling will be lambasted and, in our era of cancel culture, this has the potential to spread like wildfire. Nonetheless, with 62% of global consumers saying they will watch how a company responds to issues of racial or gender inequality when considering whether to buy their product, being silent has never been riskier.

Continued self-reflection and awareness is key for brands looking to understand where they fit in the jigsaw of culture. Don’t put all your trust in your manifesto and data analytics. No matter how diverse, we all have biases and need various stop-gaps where outside communities and expertise can come in and sense check what we could simply never understand without hearing it from the source itself.

Whether providing a platform for voices or leading the effort yourself, compassionate communication first requires listening to consumers. However, there has been a lot of listening during these past few months – and the time to make changes was yesterday. The brands that can listen to the cultural conversation and then help lead it will be shaping not just their own future, but influencing the communities and brands of tomorrow.

Learn more in FleishmanHillard Fishburn’s Thinking Allowed – Issue 4 report here.

I recently had the chance to attend FMI’s Fresh Forward three-day virtual meeting about the state of the fresh sections (produce, meat, dairy) of the grocery store. After being bombarded daily with new research studies, it was wonderful to hear from grocery CEOs, senior section managers and industry researchers about their perspective and to talk with others in breakouts about what we have been experiencing. With many clients in/supplying this space, I know how difficult these past six months have been. The group was united in thinking the shift to grocery over foodservice will continue for the foreseeable future. More importantly, key themes provide whitespace for many in the food industry to consider, including:

Digital Ordering is here to stay: The need for safety during the pandemic shifted many to online ordering/click and collect. Susan Schwallie from the NPD Group noted this led the grocery industry to exceed and maintain 2025 digital ordering projections. Consumers have switched stores for the ease of online ordering, and note order accuracy, quality of fresh items and ease of ordering as their key satisfiers. While this seems like great news, it also presents many challenges. How will consumers find new products when they aren’t walking the store? How can brands influence meal planning when consumers’ mental cookbook will drive list making? And what’s the right balance of experience and efficiency for future store design?

Cooking for one to 10: Families with children make up just about 40% of U.S. households and are very heavy grocery purchasers. With a significant shift to retail from foodservice, households of singles, couples and multi-generations outnumber the families with just parents and children in the home and their food experiences, and needs, are different. Foundational meal planning, cooking and food storage skills are needed. Recipes need to be written for flexible servings and/or provide ideas on how to use ingredients in other food ideas. Not only do we need dinner at home, we need breakfast, lunch and snacks as well. And package sizes need to meet many needs with only one spot on the shelf.

The safety/sustainability continuum: There is no doubt pre-pandemic we were rapidly moving to a more sustainable food system — from the farm to the table. And the shortages seen in the early stages showed consumers the challenges of managing a food supply chain. Kevin Holt, the CEO of Ahold Delhaize USA, shared recent research from Hartman showing this has led to a 15-point jump (from 28% to 43%) of consumers saying sustainability is very important. But concerns about safety have pushed consumers to pre-cut, pre-packaged produce and meat. How to meet a new safety standard with a stronger push for sustainability will drive innovation in the next several months.

The upside — the solutions needed to address the above present opportunities for the entire farm to table value chain. And the changes in consumer behavior beg for a much stronger table to farm value chain to ensure a safe, secure supply. Big data, shared systems and metrics are needed to solve all these challenges, and these challenges present new business building opportunities for brands willing to rethink the entire “eating at home” process.