WHERE ROMANIA TALKS BUSINESS IN CRISIS, COMMUNICATION SHOULD BE STRONGER THAN EVER

In crisis, communication

should be stronger than ever

Working from home. Closed or transformed businesses. The entire business environment is learning to better adapt to the pandemic with each passing day. Still, entrepreneurs must learn from the past and understand that only creativity and thinking differently and strategically will help them rise above the fray.

By Romanita Oprea

Sorin Dutoiu, Yolo Media

Elena Bululete, Conan PR

What should an entrepreneur do in terms of communication during this crisis? First of all, according to Alina Galeriu, managing partner at Galeriu & Partners Public Relations, entrepreneurs shouldn’t give up. Then, of course, they should think of ways to survive, but also to be helpful to their partners and the community. “They have to reinvent themselves. Think of new ways to be of service. Show empathy. There is no worse time than a crisis to stop communicating. In times of distress there is vital need for transparency and reconnection. What consumers, business partners, and even employees need in times like these is a reinforced feeling of togetherness. And this is something you can only do by communicating even more than you would in normal times,” said Alina Galeriu.

Furthermore, according to Ioana Manoiu, managing partner at GMP, permanent communication must be maintained with employees and clients, and this needs to be done with confidence and optimism. During this period, we need leaders to show they know what they’re doing. People are already lost and confused, with oscillating emotional states, so the job of a leader is to reassure them and remind them that everything will be fine again at some point. There is a lot of pressure on leaders and entrepreneurs, because they have their own fears about their businesses. “People need leaders more than ever. Employees need to feel that their leader is present and in control, customers want to be sure they will get their products/services, and suppliers want to know they will get paid. An absent leader only conveys additional panic among all stakeholders, which overlaps

with the existing panic. They must be present and show they have a plan and a mission. That they have things under control, and they know what they must do. It’s a time when mature and adaptable leaders will have a lot to gain,” explained Ioana Manoiu.

Elena Bululete, managing partner at Conan PR, agrees that an entrepreneur should continue communicating, especially during this crisis. “The most important rule in any crisis is that you don’t hide and don’t deny that there is a crisis. Do not be afraid to overcommunicate – do it often but provide value

to this communication process. Focus on employees. Focus on the community you are a part of,” she argued. According to the Conan PR representative, first of all, one should keep in touch with all stakeholders (employees, clients, partners, etc.), and keep them in the loop - be transparent and provide information on how the crisis is affecting everyone involved. “Secondly, we don’t know where things are going to stand after this crisis. What we know for sure is that there will be change. And that is a process that involves everyone. So use this time wisely, acknowledge the situation, and empathize with people, understand their perspectives. At the end of the day, we’re all human,” Bululete added.

Moreover, Sorin Dutoiu, managing partner at Yolo Media, an agency that has offered pro bono help to several companies during the pandemic, believes entrepreneurs should communicate with their audience even more than before, even if their business has been hit by the crisis. “During these times, and especially after the restrictions are lifted, brands must invest in proper communication and public relations (PR) because this will make the difference on the market. Those who do it properly have the chance to keep their existing customers close and gain new

ones. This is not only the time to adjust the business to the new situation, but to increase brand awareness and therefore adjust communication to present times. We are all in this together,” he explained. As the pandemic affects us in every aspect, we need to be united, to send empathy and support. “Brands must be more human than ever in terms of communication. An entrepreneur must understand that, even though sales will be lower in this period, the company must remain close to its audience using strong, useful, and emotional social media content as well as good PR actions. Customers will remember that the brand was on their side and will be more likely to return to its products and recommend them to others. Think of this as being a clean system restart. The brands that matter in the public’s heart will become stronger. The others could easily be forgotten,” the Yolo Media representative noted.

LESSONS FROM THE PAST As an economic crisis is already around the corner, more and more business people are looking back at how the 2008-2010 crisis impacted the Romanian market and are wondering whether it will be different this time around, and whether we learned anything from that experience. And as Sorin Dutoiu points out, the marcomm industry is almost completely different nowadays from what it was 12 years ago. With social media and smartphones, the online world has become the leading environment for communication. And we have a new generation of customers, with new habits and expectations.

Back in the previous crisis, Ioana Manoiu learned then hat you have to make decisions quickly and adjust your costs to your revenues because later, it will be harder and more traumatic to do. You mustn’t get attached to one form of business or another; you have to be permanently open to change the model, structure and services. “Here is the trap that many entrepreneurs fall into: they are in love with what they’ve built and don’t have the power to change the recipe when it’s no longer relevant. They hope that this is only temporary and they will be able return to what worked before. But in most cases, you can never go back. A new world is being built, and it needs relevant products or services,” Manoiu explained.

“What we failed to learn from that time was how to behave more cautiously, creating a safety net for when the next crisis hits. I’m not sure we will learn it after this one passes, either. We seem to quite easily forget how hard it can get after it’s over. Maybe this is something we should work on in the future,” said Alina Galeriu. At the same time, the fact that this is a health crisis does make it more stressful because it threatens each of us directly and it has a wider veil of uncertainty around it. It makes us all more vulnerable. “But at the same time, we’re even more willing to do whatever it takes to overcome it,” concluded Galeriu.

Industries gaining from crisis: couriers, supermarkets, online retailers

Online shopping remains one of the few industries that are growing during the pandemic crisis. Across the European Union, 60 percent of people aged 16 to 74 shopped online in the last 12 months, compared to 56 percent in the 2018 survey.

By Aurel Constantin

Romania has one of the lowest shares of online shoppers, with only 23 percent of the active population. In Europe, only Bulgaria has a lower share, at 22 percent, while the highest shares can be found in Demark (84 percent), Sweden (82 percent), and the Netherlands (81 percent).

The situation is about to change as the pandemic has been forcing people to stay indoors and many non-essential shops have been closed. This means that many things, including restaurant food, have only been available through online orders.

But problems haven’t just come up on the customer side. Eurostat statistics show that only 12 percent of Romanian companies with at least 10 employees had online sales that accounted for more than 1 percent of their revenues. The European average share of companies that carry out online sales is 17 percent.

Online shopping is steadily increasing in Romania. In 2019, the value of online shopping reached EUR 4.3 billion in Romania, according to the Romanian Association of Online Stores (ARMO), 20 percent higher than in 2018, but this increase was lower than the one recorded between 2017 and 2018, of 30 percent. The sector is now expected now to grow at a more rapid pace, as the coronavirus crisis changes the way we shop. But while online shopping grows as a whole, not all products will see the same increase in sales. Nonessential goods like clothes and shoes are not on shoppers’ lists these days. Auto products - cars and related items - are not selling either, with many vehicles sitting idle in parking lots. Goods that are seeing higher sales at the moment are supermarket food, personal care and hygiene, and health products.

Supermarkets are among the winners of the SARS-CoV-2 crisis

pharmacies, online retailers, courier companies, and online entertainment providers. According to the Association of Large Retail Networks in Romania (AMRCR), supermarket and hypermarket sales have increased by 30 percent since the start of the state of emergency. Online, orders of food products recorded a tenfold increase compared to the daily average before the crisis. The highest online surges were for products like water, sugar, corn, flour, cooking oil, and yeast, according to eMAG.

Sameday, eMAG’s courier service, recorded a 10 percent increase in delivering volumes, with the number of daily orders reaching 100,000, coming close to Black Friday figures.

Couriers are favoured by the lockdown through the fact that they are spending less time in traffic, so the time it takes to complete a delivery decreases and more orders can be delivered in a day. Also, because people are at home, the number of unsuccessful deliveries has declined. Increases can also be seen in the number of food deliveries. Companies like Glovo, Uber Eats, FoodPanda or Takeaway have all seen a surge in orders in March and around Easter. Overall, orders of cooked food in April were lower than in March since many people decided do more cooking at home. According to a study carried out by Restograf, 67 percent of Bucharest residents cooked more compared to the days before the lockdown.

A change has also been seen in the way people pay when they are shopping or getting things delivered. In Bucharest, online card payments reached 75 percent of the total, a huge increase compared to the end of 2019 when card payments were only at 20 percent. Furthermore, the number of people who said they often made cash payments went down from 45 to 21 percent, according to a survey by Nocash Capital Consult. ”As expected, COVID-19 has been the most efficient campaign to promote non-cash payments and online banking,” said Sergiu Cone, CEO at Nocash Capital Consult.

Technologies for healthy buildings: How to keep employees safe as they return to work

Most of the white-collar workers that used to populate office buildings are working from home amid the restrictions imposed by the state of emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic will eventually pass, but life will not be the same as new technologies will be implemented in order to keep people safe.

By Aurel Constantin

A healthy building goes beyond energy efficiency to ensure the health, confidence, and productivity of the people who use it

There are over 300,000 employees working in Class A office buildings in Bucharest alone. Across the country, the number stands at around 1 million, and doubles if we also take into account non-A Class buildings. All these buildings will need to be transformed in order to keep employees safe and healthy after the emergency restrictions are lifted.

Security systems are of the utmost importance when it comes to healthy buildings. Security cameras and connected sensors located throughout a building can provide insight into how spaces have historically been used to predict where and when occupants come into contact with each other or congregate. These foot traffic patterns can inform settings for a variety of devices – like ventilation and temperature controls – to address both health needs, such as social distancing, and energy use.

But security systems as wellness tools don’t have to stay inside buildings. Access control technology can prevent unauthorised or at-risk people from entering a building or specific areas of the building, to curb the spread of illnesses when required without the need for manual inspection. Surveillance video analytics can also help ensure proper health protocols are followed. Security alerts can notify facility managers about crowds. Video forensics can identify where in a building an infected occupant spent time in order to conduct contact tracing. All of this can be done with limited human labour, giving staff enough time to focus on other critical tasks.

“A healthy building goes beyond energy efficiency to ensure the health, confidence, and productivity of the people who use it,” says Himanshu Khurana, Chief Technology Officer at Honeywell Building Solutions.

AIR FILTRATION AND TEMPERATURE According to recommendations in the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), ventilation is key to a healthy building, especially during a pandemic. It is important to have a system that can supply as much outside air as possible to indoor environments to reduce air recirculation and dilute indoor contaminants. Also, pressurization is particularly critical in hospitals aiming to improve the speed of air replacement and ensure less air is recycled. In negative pressure rooms, outflow valves push used air into a HEPA filter so it cannot flow outward to new, uncontaminated areas.

For indoor air systems, filtration is very important. Effective filtration is essential for air quality – from pollutants to microbes, it can help remove particles to clean recirculated and fresh outdoor air. New technologies can automatically adjust these parameters and, with the help of sensors, maintain healthy air inside buildings.

High temperatures and high relative humidity significantly reduce the transmission of many viruses. Increasing temperature and maintaining 40-60 percent humidity in high-traffic areas may slow the spread of contagious illnesses, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although studies are in early stages, some have found that several viruses are more stable in cold climates and that droplets remain airborne for longer in dry air. For germs, there are antimicrobial plastics and UV surface disinfection solutions.

This technology is typically used for security purposes, but can be useful during a pandemic to limit the movement of at-risk individuals. It can also guide people to free spaces in order to keep them from crowding. Together with a bigger space between offices or plastic walls between people, these technologies can keep employees safe from the coronavirus, at least until a vaccine is found for SaRS-COV-2.