The Crisis has Made the Communal Task a Specific one
Just a few months ago, coronavirus and Covid-19 were things only a few of us had ever heard of. Suddenly, they were here, and our lives changed in a way none of us had ever experienced before and in a way we could never have imagined.
In such extraordinary times, the most important thing is to stand together. This has been a situation in which we had to keep the wheels turning under completely new circumstances. We have had to do so as individuals with our private lives and families, and while undertaking a very specific communal task. Because the financial sector was desperately needed, along with its personnel, who worked tirelessly to help those customers caught up in the maelstrom.
Paradoxically, despite the knee-jerk political jibes made against the finance sector on its reluctance to help, you have every reason to be proud of your efforts to maintain the financial foundation and liquidity needed by private and business customers throughout the crisis. You were the ones who did it.
And you did it by doing what I believe is completely fundamental for all of us who have chosen to work in the financial sector. We supported everything needed in key areas to keep our society functioning – even when the going got tough.
The last few months will leave their mark and have consequences on our lives and on society in general moving forwards. Everyone’s trying to predict the future, but no one really knows what’s going to happen. But we have got through the first critical phase by pulling together. It was never easy, and we still need to put in the same amount of effort as we move towards reopening and returning to normal.
We will learn from experience of course, learn to use the new technologies in new ways, to solve problems in different ways, to work in different ways and perhaps to organise our lives differently. We need to use that experience constructively. We need to take the best from the situation – but not to accept that solutions from a crisis can become a quick shortcut to cutbacks.
The post-corona world will be a different one. We will enter it in the knowledge that we pulled together, supported each other, fulfilled our responsibilities and demonstrated the same value we represent every single day. And that is a very specific, important task and function for our employers, customers and society.
These are things we need to highlight to the world at large, and to our employers. Particularly in what will now be considered ‘the new normality’.