Recently, I wrote a blog on the relative worth of company values. Since that was written, a certain virus that will remain nameless (it’s you, Corona) decided to roll up its sleeves, start taking names and kicking ass. As a result, the world has been turned upside-down, inside-out, and kicked to a bloody pulp. It’s at times like this when people start to show their true colours, and this latest crisis hasn’t disappointed on that level.
Speaking from a humanitarian point of view, we should all be doing our level best to ensure that we adhere to scientifically recommended precautions, looking after the vulnerable as best we can, and doing our best to support an already-overstretched NHS service. Instead, we’ve got people literally fighting over bog rolls like its Black Friday, advice to stay indoors being roundly ignored (potentially risking thousands of lives), and we have the front line workers unable to buy any provisions after pulling a double shift because we’ve been selfish and stockpiled things. It’s much the same on the business front, too. We have billionaires laying workers off and asking for money from the Government for lost earnings, multinational conglomerates staying open after they’ve been told to shut down, and people being arrested for selling fake coronavirus tester kits.
Times are tough, times are unpredictable, I get it, but that’s no reason to start behaving like we’re living in a combination of Wall Street and Mad Max. When the dust has settled on all of this and some flicker of normality resumes, I think that people are going to look very hard at how companies have conducted themselves throughout this whole debacle. I suspect that most people would rather deal with companies that looked after their people, their clients, and acted with professional dignity and decency rather than the ones who chose to abandon ship at the first sign of troubled waters.
Mercury Hampton’s company values are Hard Work, Humility, Teamwork, and Well-Being and we’re trying harder than ever to uphold these values. We might not get it 100% right, after all, this is unchartered territory for us all.
But we’ll give it a damned good go.
As for those companies that have taken the knee-jerk approach, not lived up to their core values, and behaved less than admirably; karma will get you. You could keep an active online presence throughout this whole lockdown period, and believe that your business is in a strong position, but if you’ve not looked after your own then that will speak far louder and spread much faster than any advertising campaign you can run.
Be safe, be sensible, be kind.
