Putting Company Values to the Test

This situation is shining a light on everyone and every company. Testing their individual and collective morals and values.

It’s really proving if the words promoted on websites and stuck around the walls of company offices really meant something. Or if they were just there as decoration and a reminder of meaningless interview questions to ask.

 A life more Virgin

The highest profile example of this for me is Virgin Atlantic, their company website lists their values as being:

Everyone can agree these all read great. Sending a positive and loving message of putting both the customer and their people first.

Just what you’d expect of a Virgin business, right?

But how are they being lived at this moment?

Think Red.

“You love to go the extra mile, above and beyond what our customers expect”

In response to the crisis, one of their first actions was to close their customer service phone lines. Forcing customers to only engage over text message or WhatsApp. Hardly an example of ‘going the extra mile’. They actually made it harder for customers to engage and first contact resolution became non-existent.

In my own experience, it’s took 2 weeks of texting, including numerous chase ups when they failed to respond. All which could have been resolved in 1 phone call.

Mistakes were made, as they didn’t apply the correct cancellation policies. In the end they’re doing the right thing, but only because I pushed back, and yet will take around 45 days before they complete redress.

Whilst I recognise they were inundated by customer contact and plenty of problems they needed to overcome, their biggest UK rival, British Airways, approached things differently.

They still took calls (although with long hold times) and dealt with customer queries straight away, including a first contact resolution and completed redress within 5 working days. All done right at the peak of public panic when their phone lines were in meltdown.

Going into this crisis, my brand preference sat with Virgin. Coming out of it, it’s with BA. Because they didn’t make the customer’s life harder by closing off communication channels, and empowered their staff to do what they needed in that first contact to resolve the problem at hand.

Make Friends & Be Amazing.

Their values here states:

“Virgin loves people. It’s how we treat one another that makes us special. We embrace our team-mates…”

“When you’re a Virgin brand, people expect more of you. So we expect more of ourselves”

“We’re here to be amazing. Because life’s too short to be anything less”.

People look to leaders in times of crisis. To set the tone and lead the way. In this case, it’s Richard Branson. He still holds a 51% stake in the company, so he’s really the figurehead for the business and very much the public image of all things Virgin.

Yet, at the beginning of the crisis. The firm gave their staff a series of choices. They ranged from bad to worse options. Including a one-off severance package, 6 to 12 month sabbaticals, delay pay rises and reduction to pensions. Staff elected to take an 8 week unpaid arrangement spread across 6 months. AKA a 33% pay cut.

However with a personal wealth in the region of ￡4bn, Sir Richard could have paid each member of staff affected ￡500 per week for 8 weeks, at a total cost of ￡34m.

This represents 0.85% of his personal wealth.

Hardly an example of living his own company’s values and ‘Virgin loving people’.

Going Above and Beyond

Disney is a firm with significant exposure to this crisis. With all parks, hotels and resorts, entertainment, cruise lines closed and cancelled for months. Missed box office revenues for Easter block busters and closed retail operations, plus live sport cancelled, it’s had around 70% of its revenue generating channels shut down.

Yet despite all this, also agreed to pay all staff in full for the months following shut down of these operations.

In addition to the firm’s significant fixed costs, they’ve got tens of thousands of customers needing refunds or re-books and a prime Easter trading period missed.

They even went beyond expectations here, offering refunds on unused park tickets which had a year validity date, recognising customers may not be able to travel this year. Or offered extensions of those tickets to 30th September 2021, meaning those customers could take advantage of this and join in the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations next year in Orlando.

So they've done what’s right and delivered a bit of Disney magic to the consumer as well.

Now the US has set up its furlough arrangements, they’re understandably moving staff across to this rather than losing them. After all, even a business as large as Disney can’t sustain outgoing of that scale without any income.

But in addition, their senior executives (including the incoming CEO) have chosen to either forgo or significantly reduce their income for the 2020 year; with EVP’s taking a 30% drop, SVP’s 25% and VP’s 20% (source: DFB Guide).

What’s important is they didn’t immediately jump on the lay-off train or force pay cuts on their lowest paid or mainstream workforce. They took some of the strain and put their arms around them, offering some protection until such time as the Governments stepped in with other solutions.

To me, they’ve acted impeccably and should be applauded.

Doing the right thing

Another great example was given by MoneySavingExpert’s Martin Lewis. He exampled a friend who had tendered resignation to go to a new job. Only for that job offer to be withdrawn the day before the person was due to start.

That person was left in the cold, unable to furlough or find something new. He encouraged them to go back to their old employer and ask for their job back, just to be furloughed for now.

The former employer agreed… it’s just a shame he didn’t mention which company this was, as I’d love to have been able to publicly praise them for this action.

Reward brands you can trust, even in times of crisis

As consumers we make conscious decisions about the brands we associate with or purchase based on a services of personal beliefs and values.

For example, I will never fly Ryanair because I can't stand Mike O'Leary. His attitude towards customers appalls me. So I'd rather spend that bit more than expose myself to the kind of potential horror stories I hear about how Ryanair handles customer issues.

A colleague of mine will never purchase anything Nestle. Due to a mix of their attitude towards bottled water, a series of high profile incidents in the third world, and for how they handled palm oil and removing natural habitats for orangutans.

But this issue is causing the halo for some brands to slip, and proving, when they're tested, they can't live up to their promises.

So, much as you might reconsider a purchase as a consumer based on your feelings towards certain brands. You might want to reconsider your next job application in the same way.

Did the brand you're applying to really stand by its values? Or did it demonstrate more of a 'fair weather' approach and ditch them as soon as the going got tough?

If they did, is that really somewhere you want to be part of?

Here to help

I’ve written a number of blogs to hopefully help give some insight into recruitment, job searching or how to prepare, especially if you’re not had to do so in a while.

There’s more planned for the coming weeks. Each include market insights from a recruiters perspective, and can hopefully give you some ideas which can help you in your search.

You can find some of them here:

The Recruitment industry needs to change (part 1)

The Recruitment Industry needs to change (part 2)

Job Searching during a pandemic

How to get job search ready

Interviewing, Sadistic Bosses & Putting the Employer Under the Spotlight

Agencies like Blue Pelican, are still here and we’re keen to help where we can. So don’t discount us from your search process.

Even if there’s fewer live vacancies right now, we can advise, give ideas and knowledge share, much like these blog posts have been designed to do.

But if there’s something you would like further insight on. Or if there’s elements I’ve not delved deeply enough into for you. Please leave a comment below, or email me at [email protected]

In the meantime, be safe and be kind.