Covid-19 is also changing the face of lobbying activity and increasingly shifts the confrontation between professionals in the sector, who communicate partisan interests increasingly oriented towards information content, and the institutions that will then have to decide laws and regulations for sectors concerned.
According to research, conceived and coordinated by ADL Consulting, and implemented during the first national lockdown (March - May 2020), the health, economic and social emergency caused by the coronavirus also strongly affected the typical activities of Lobbying and Public Affairs, encouraging their digitization. Here are the answers from the sample analysed, 50 professionals from the public and private sector.
All of the sample interviewed continued to carry out their full-time job. During the first lockdown, 68% did it in smartworking, 24% in remote working (with telephone or email communications) and only a small part going to the office with planning measures or with rotating shifts.
“On the podium of the most used tools for interacting with the public decision-maker – the research specifies – there are, in order, Virtual Meeting (41%), Email (28%) and WhatsApp (25%). The more relational aspect of the Lobbying activity, i.e. the one relating to the meeting with the public decision-maker, was mediated by video communication platforms, the use of which pre-Covid-19 was reserved for a niche of typically international meetings".
An interesting aspect of the research concerns the repositioning of communication by companies: 82% of the companies involved in the survey have launched initiatives aimed at disseminating correct information or help towards the areas or subjects most affected by the emergency. 44% of the companies involved launched a solidarity activity during the Covid-19 crisis, while 38% set up ad hoc communication campaigns.
Other aspects touched upon by the investigation concern the mandatory registration in the register of interest representatives and the completion of the national legislation on the subject. Finally, 62% of professionals stated that they had been subjected to overwork in the period given the huge amount of legislative provisions - national and European - of this period, with problems of information overload and lack of coordination.
