Carrie Freeman Parsons and Bob Priest-Heck provided some insight into the state of the events industry and what Freeman is doing to pivot as a company with purpose in a COVID-19 world.

Here are a few key takeaways

Key to survival is staying close to your stakeholders and maintaining a long-term focus.
Freeman has been a company for 90+ years. In that time, they have survived many ups and downs including shutting down entirely during WWII and transitioning to a government contractor painting army barracks. Throughout all of their history – including the current crisis – they see their stakeholder relationships and maintaining their long-term focus as critical to survival. As Carrie states, “We’ve seen so much in our history and we know the degree to which we stay close to our customers, and we stay close to our business, and we stay close to our people, and we continue to keep that long-term focus; it has really equipped us to be able to get through what we’re going through today.”

Conscious Capitalism provides a language that helps make implicit values into explicit culture.
Freeman boasts a blended leadership team, that is to say their team is made up of generational employees as well as leaders brought in through acquisition and talent development. In a situation like this, they have had to ask – Who are we, what do we stand for? Conscious Capitalism helps leaders take the core values of a company, which in many cases are implicit, and can support leaders in turning those values into a thriving conscious culture. Helping to define the “who we are and what we stand for” necessary to build strong, resilient teams.

Maintaining and building trust during a crisis like this, requires empathy and a willingness to meet people where they are, wherever they are.
Bob begins by telling us that “You can’t assume everyone is in the same place.” At Freeman, they are curating opportunities for their team to grieve, to express denial, to experience depression. They understand that some of their people are experiencing real hardships, whether it’s illness or loss, or the daily struggle to shelter in place. They take a practical approach to building trust: Making sure all communications are structured around security and safety, and providing a communications strategy, even for their furloughed employees, to keep them as close as possible during this time.

Keep track of the changes you are making now, so when your furloughed employees come back, they won’t feel like strangers or outsiders in the company.
You can still find ways to care for your furloughed employees and ensure they are up to speed with where you are at when they return to the company. Freeman has given their furloughed employees access to all of their learning and development education tools. Letting them know that this is a great time to take that class you’ve been hoping to (but never had the time), and they pay for it. Bob acknowledges that ~ 50% of their furloughed employees take advantage of these offerings. He also acknowledges that post-Covid-19, the work they will be coming back to will be different and only time will tell what work will look like. So the Freeman team is carefully documenting the changes they make now, so when their furloughed team members come back, they will better understand the changes that have taken place and feel included in the way they do business in the new normal

Don’t get hung up on old metrics for success.
As we move into the next stages of this crisis, we need to stay mindful that old measures of success may no longer apply. When in doubt, stay super clear on your values and seek to stay grounded in the long-term view and being authentic with your people. As Carrie says, “We’re designing in a speculative world, we know what we know, and we need to press forward in a way that’s aligned with who we are and what we do and bring our people along with us.”