Covid-19 Study
2020-2023
What was the study about?
In April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was just taking hold and in the UK, we were locked down and in uncharted territory. The narrative was about survival and managing cash – little thought was being given to recovery and refresh. So, as our contribution to our client community, we set up a survey to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing and economic conditions of organisations and people – the COVID-19 Impact Indicator survey.
We continued the longitudinal study annually for 3 years, through 2020, 2021 and 2022, reaching over 10,000 respondents.
3
Cycles
9,000+
Respondents
40+
Surveys
What did we find out?
The 'left-behind' are becoming out of sight and out of mind
Interventions from Government had an overall positive impact on economic status and wellbeing.
However they increased the gap between the vulnerable and the already comfortable.
In the future, interventions should be much more targeted as the outcome has been an even more unequal society.
“I’m preparing for the worst case, redundancy, which would lead to a catastrophic economic impact, looking at all my options, from equity release, cashing in my pensions, to selling up to live in a mobile home, or abroad, I have even considered if there would be any point in continuing.”
Build 'work from wherever' but don't assume 'wherever' works for everyone.
Organisations were quick to embrace work from home. Follow up strategies to bring staff back to the office have been less successful but overall an effective ‘work from wherever’ policy is emerging.
This still needs to be calibrated for different needs to ensure inequalities are not baked into access to work.
“I’m still working full time but home-schooling kids is a pain, hopefully I will be able to go into the office a few days to break the week up.”
Covid-19 Impact Report - why should you still be interested?
The pandemic has set new norms for behaviour in work, life, travel and communications. The emerging trends are relevant for building strategies for organisations in the future.
Where was it distributed?
In 2020, almost immediately after the pandemic we presented a panel with study collaborators at one of the first global virtual conferences to emerge from the pandemic, the Quirks global research conference.
The theme was devising recovery strategies in the face of distress short term decision making, using the data from our wave 1 study.
The audience was global brands and organisations who use research and insight to drive their communications, product service and development plans.
In 2021 we were invited to speak at the Global Social Marketing Conference in Brighton, UK.
The theme was understanding responses to behaviour change in the face of unprecedented events and determining how interventions could really make a positive difference.
The audience was NGO’s and Governments around the world.
In 2022, we joined forces with The Henley Centre for Customer Management to present at their annual conference.
The theme was creating secretaries for vulnerable customers through our work on the Impact study that showed they were a cohort that had been further cast adrift as result of the pandemic.
The audience was UK based large utilities and financial service organisations.