Internal Marketing to face the "new normal"
workplace challenges: Organizational Agility as a booster
Mercadotecnia Interna para enfrentar
la “nueva normalidad” en los centros de trabajo: Agilidad Organizacional como
refuerzo
Nancy Berenice Ortiz Alvarado[1], Eva María Guerra Leal[2]
Abstract
The
purpose of this research is to identify the new challenges and opportunities
that companies had faced due to the radical transformation of work schemes
during the COVID-19 contingency. During this environment of uncertainty and
change, we look for an understanding of how organizational agility has helped
companies to implement key Internal Marketing strategies to cope with such
challenges, being able to differentiate between “brilliant improvisation” and a
repeatable capability to be prepared for a future crisis or environmental
challenging scenarios. This paper presents a proposed model that analyzes two
relevant research gaps: 1) The relationship between Internal Marketing and
Organizational Agility, and 2) The challenges of Internal Marketing inside an
organization derived from an external crisis (COVID-19). Eight semi‐structured
long interviews, focused on understanding the employer's perspective, were
developed with CEOs of SMEs in various industries in Mexico. The findings
suggest five main challenges to enable Internal Marketing strategies through
organizational agility: 1) communication
2) emotional well-being, 3) safety, 4) empowerment, and 5) digital tools
management.
Keywords:
Internal Marketing, Organizational
Agility, COVID-19
Resumen
El objetivo de esta investigación es identificar los nuevos retos y
oportunidades que las empresas han enfrentado debido a la radical
transformación en los esquemas de trabajo durante la contingencia de COVID-19.
Durante un entorno de incertidumbre y cambio, buscamos una comprensión de cómo
la agilidad organizacional ha ayudado a las empresas a implementar estrategias
clave de Mercadotecnia Interna para hacer frente a tales desafíos, y
diferenciar entre lo que es una "improvisación brillante" y una
reiterada capacidad para estar preparados para una crisis futura o escenarios
desafiantes en el entorno. Este artículo presenta una propuesta de modelo
conceptual que analiza dos brechas de investigación relevantes: 1) La relación
entre Mercadotecnia Interna y Agilidad Organizacional, y 2) Los desafíos de la
Mercadotecnia Interna al interior de una organización, derivados de una crisis
externa (COVID-19). Se desarrollaron ocho entrevistas semiestructuradas con
directores generales de PYMES en diversas industrias en México enfocadas en
comprender la perspectiva del empleador. Los hallazgos sugieren cinco
principales retos para viabilizar estrategias de Mercadotecnia Interna a través
de la agilidad organizacional: 1) comunicación 2) bienestar emocional, 3)
seguridad, 4) empoderamiento y 5) manejo de herramientas digitales.
Palabras Clave: Mercadotecnia
Interna, Agilidad Organizacional, COVID-19
Introduction
The environment in which organizations operate is changing
rapidly due to external and internal factors. Facing uncertainty, companies
need to react and adapt quickly with agile strategies, under circumstances that
are out of their control. In this sense, during a crisis, it is especially
relevant to take advantage of developing organizational agility to survive in
an uncertain environment. An example of this kind of crisis is the COVID-19
pandemic that forced companies to face different and new challenges to the
working force system changing the entire work dynamic for enterprises (Hartmann
& Lussier, 2020; Guerra-Leal, Ortiz & Ruiz, 2022).
According to the World Bank, worldwide, one-fourth of the
companies saw their sales fall 50%, and on average their sales dropped 27%,
from October 20 to January 2021, compared to the pre-covid levels. Also, a
great number of companies closed and were hit harder due to the economic crisis
that COVID-19 brought, while many others survived into a turbulent environment
(World Bank, 2021). The companies that survived were pushed to implement
internal changes to adapt to the new workplace dynamic and environment.
Companies were facing several challenges in different
areas such as medicine, economics, business, technology, sociology, and
psychology (Karabag, 2020). Particularly, in the
workplace field, employees around the world were feeling anxious, unmotivated,
and with high levels of uncertainty. In fact, 65% of businesses adjusted
payroll by reducing hours, wages, or granting leave; and 11% of companies
laid-off workers (World Bank, 2021). Also, uncertainty under this context
depends primarily on health-related aspects (i.e., the mortality rate
associated with the virus) (World Bank, 2020). Companies started to identify a
need of implementing Internal Marketing strategies to go through the crisis and
keep their employees’ emotional well-being, feeling safe, motivated, and
committed. Additionally, there is strong evidence that employees prefer to work
in companies that care about them (Vasconselos,
2008). That is where the issue of internal marketing becomes relevant, it is
not only a human resource topic because for marketing managers employees are
the face of the organization to its customers, and a key element to deliver a
high quality of service.
Companies needed to react rapidly, and Internal Marketing
strategies were a key element for facing the main challenges in the workplace.
Thus, organizational agility was needed to cope with challenges in an
accelerated way. According to Harraf, Wanasika, Tate, and Talbott (2015), organizational agility
is the ability to respond fast and effectively to environmental changes, but
also to respond fast to unpredicted changes. During the COVID-19 crisis,
organizational agility was not only a must, but it also performed as a company
booster, in order to adapt to the “new normality”.
Therefore, the aim of this paper is to understand the main
internal marketing challenges that companies have faced during the contingency
and how the organizational agility enabled the implementation of key strategies
to cope with them. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring how
companies have been reacting to face those challenges and how Internal
Marketing and Organizational Agility have worked together, in the context of
COVID-19 contingency in Mexico’s northeast region. This paper presents a
proposed model that analyzes two relevant research gaps: 1) The relationship
between Internal Marketing and Organizational Agility, and 2) The challenges of
Internal Marketing inside an organization derived from an external crisis
(COVID-19). Most of the research conducted in Organizational Agility has been
focused more on customers than on employees; the approach of this paper is to
put employees at the center of organizational agility (Batra, 2020).
This study was carried out using a qualitative methodology
to identify the most relevant challenges that companies have faced during the
COVID-19 contingency, and looks for an understanding of the employer's perspective
through eight semi‐structured long interviews with CEOs of SMEs in various
industries in Mexico. Our findings suggest five main challenges that companies
faced during a turbulent context, with high levels of uncertainty such as
COVID-19: 1) communication 2) emotional well-being, 3) safety, 4) empowerment,
and 5) digital tools management. We identified that Internal Marketing was a
key strategy to address such challenges and that organizational agility was a
booster to accelerate the implementation of tactics to cope with this scenario.
This research paper is structured as follows. In the first
section, we present the theoretical framework about Internal Marketing,
Organizational Agility, and how these constructs are related. In the second
section, the qualitative method is explained. Later, in the third section, the
results of the five main challenges that companies had faced since March 2020
are discussed. Finally, we state the conclusions of the main findings,
contribution, and further research.
Theoretical Framework
Internal Marketing
Internal Marketing is defined as “a planned effort
using a marketing-like approach, to overcome organizational resistance to
change and to align, motivate and inter-functionally coordinate and integrate
employed towards the effective implementation of corporate strategies to
deliver customer satisfaction through a process of creating motivated and
customer-oriented employees” (Rafiq & Ahmed, 2000, p. 454); and as “the
task of ensuring employees understand the brand promise and their part in
delivering an on-brand customer experience” (Mosley, 2007, p. 128). In other
words, internal marketing studies “the fact that the concept of external
marketing to apply inside of an organization” (Huang, 2020, p. 412), by recognizing
that the employee is the first customer, and it is important to motivate
him/her and promote a great place to work in order to deliver the brand's
promised service.
Theories in this academic field include the
marketing mix model, relationship marketing, social exchange theory,
transaction cost theory, service profit chain, and the resource-based view
(Qaisar & Muhamad, 2021) and integrates perspectives from diverse areas
such as service marketing, human resources, and psychology (Dean, 2004), since
the employee attitudes and behaviors are an antecedent to customer perceptions
(e.g., satisfaction, loyalty, service quality) and behaviors (e.g., purchase).
The service marketing perspective studies how to generate value through the
internal service quality that employees receive and how it has an impact on
external customers (i.e., customer satisfaction, perceived quality, loyalty),
and as a consequence in profits (Dean, 2004; Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser & Schlesinger, 2008; Towler, Lezotte & Burke,
2011). In contrast, the psychological perspective is related to human resource
management by studying how to enhance the employees' experience through a
positive service climate (Schneider, 1987; Schneider and Bowen, 1993). In this
study, we consider the organizational psychology or HRM perspective because we
are interested in how companies have faced the COVID-19 challenges to promote a
positive work environment.
According to Nayal Pandey, and
Paul (2021), the Covid‐19 pandemic has deeply affected the way companies interact
with consumers and employees, making factors such as digitization, hygiene, and
sustainability more important in the new normal. Now, in this volatile and stressful
time, employers should take the responsibility to care for employees’ mental
health and well‐being.
Therefore, organizational innovation with a procedural
focus has been a key framework to respond to the needs of the people during
this period (Rocha and Almeida, 2021). This innovation has been reflected in
human resource management to encourage employee loyalty through social and
psychological rewards (Abdullah, Huang, Sarfraz & Sadiq, 2021), as well as
taking advantage of technology and safety as key points in the transformation
process (de Lucas Ancillo, del Val Núñez & Gavrila, 2021).
Majerova,
Gajanova, Nadanyiova & Kolnhofer Derecskei (2021), found
that there has been a change in the intrinsic motivation sources of employees
before and during COVID-19. Then, the principles and patterns of internal
marketing communication and motivation systems should consider the phenomenon
of “extrinsitination” of intrinsic factors that
reflects the nature of humans as social beings and indicates the need of effective
communication as a stimulus for optimal functioning of the intrinsic motivation
model of individual employees.
However, with the restrictive measures and physical
distancing and isolation, remote working has brought anxiety, technostress,
lack of social interaction, frustration, occupational burden, counterproductive
work behavior, exhaustion, burnout, depersonalization, and increased turnover
intention, so internal marketing has become more important to improve job
satisfaction (Nemteanu and Dabija,
2021).
Organizational Agility
The environment in which organizations operate is changing
rapidly due to external and internal factors. Under circumstances that are out
of the enterprises' control, and facing uncertainty, companies need to react
and adapt quickly with their strategies (Muduli &
Pandya, 2018). Agility is considered an enabler for organizations, allowing
them to act in a dynamic environment (Harsch & Festing, 2020). Organizational agility is the ability that
companies have to respond fast and effectively to environmental changes, and is
a must that separates successful organizations from those that stumble (Harraf et al., 2015).
Since different definitions of organizational agility
exist, Yang and Liu (2012), synthesized them with the following definition:
“Enterprise agility is a complex, multidimensional, and context-specific
concept, comprised of the ability to sense environmental change and quickly
respond to unpredicted change by flexibly assembling resources, processes,
knowledge, and capabilities” (Yang & Liu, 2012, p. 1023). “Organizational
agility is considered a core competency, competitive advantage, and
differentiator that requires strategic thinking, an innovative mindset,
exploitation of change, and an unrelenting need to be adaptable and proactive”
(Harraf et al., 2015, p. 675).
During covid19 contingency, institutions changed the way
they operated their business; the way governments manage health, monetary, and
fiscal policy and, the way people work, study, and live (Ivanov, 2020;
Moon, 2020). Several enterprises use their organizational agility to
quickly adapt, while other intuitively developed such capability in order to
survive; many others that were not as agile to develop it, had closed due for
COVID-19. Agile companies can flourish, whereas unprepared companies may face
extinction (Tilman, 2019).
The relevance of organizational agility and its bond with
internal marketing was a key element for companies to face the challenges that
COVID-19 brought, considering the urgent need to maintain employees motivated
to align their efforts with the firm’s objectives.
Internal Marketing and Organizational Agility
Previous research on organizational agility has focused
more on customers rather than employees; despite employee talent will draw a
high premium service, which may emphasize employees as more valuable, or at
least the same equal, value than customers (Batra, 2020). Internal marketing
recognizes employees as internal customers, meaning they are the most important
resource to the company (Rafiq & Ahmed, 2000, p. 454).
Considering such focus on employees and the nature of
internal marketing, we can establish an inherent link with organizational
agility. According to Harraf, 2015, ten pillars of
organizational agility are foundational: culture
of innovation, empowerment, tolerance or ambiguity, vision, change management,
organizational communication, market analysis and response, operations
management, structural fluidity and learning organizations (Harraf et al., 2015).
Each pillar is very closely related to internal marketing
since they are vehicles that contribute to maintain motivated employees and
being productive, addressing internal marketing issues, at the time they are
mediators to the organizational agility. For example, empowerment, is an
organizational agility pillar (Harraf, 2015), since
it allows the organization to shorten the decision-making time, reduces delays,
improves response and delivery times; and at the same time is also key to
maintain employees involved and motivated (Yao, 2013; Muduli
& Pandya, 2018; Boukis, 2019).
Thus, in this paper, we explore the key internal marketing
challenges that companies faced during the contingency, and how the
organizational agility enabled the quick adoption of strategies to face them.
Method
At the end of the first year of the COVID-19 contingency,
we conducted an exploratory study, with a qualitative methodology to identify
the most relevant challenges that companies have faced from the internal
marketing perspective. A total of eight CEOs of SMEs of various industries in
Mexico were contacted for a semi‐structured long interview, using a convenience sample
method, and following the recommendations of Kuzel
(1992).
The demographic profile of the interviewed business
leaders includes males and females between 29 and 52 years old (average 43.375
years) in c-level positions of small and medium enterprises in Mexico. (See
Table 1).
Source: Own elaboration.
The guide of topics discussed during the interviews
includes implications and challenges of COVID-19 in the Internal Communication
and Internal Marketing of the Company, areas of priority attention in human
talent issues, changes in Strategy, type of support the company has developed
for employees, perception regarding the emotional and mood state of the
collaborators, and needs of collaborators during the contingency. Some of the
questions that were applied to the participants were as follows: Which are the implications and changes on
the work dynamic of your company due to the contingency? Which are the main
changes? What has been performed differently? Which are the pain points that
you have identified? Regarding Internal Marketing and Internal Communication,
which have been the challenges you cope
with during COVID-19? What has changed in the communication process? What is your perception of your employees' emotional
state and state of mind during this contingency? What are their primary
needs in this regard? What kind of support did you offer to your employees to
face the contingency? Which has been the priority to focus on?
The researchers analyzed, codified, and interpreted, as
suggested in the literature (Spiggle, 1994), the
interview transcriptions to identify the main challenges that COVID-19 had
brought to the new workplace dynamic. A total of five big challenges were
identified and how organizational agility was a key element to respond with new
internal marketing practices at the workplace: communication, emotional well-being, safety, empowerment, and digital
tools management. Each of them will be conceptualized in the next section.
Findings and Discussion
1. Communication
COVID-19 has impacted many aspects of our lives. Social
distance and isolation have undoubtedly affected our interaction with others,
and in the case of workplaces, it is not an exception. Our interviewees state
that there has been a greater emphasis on internal communication to guarantee a
fluid, clear, and effective communication throughout the organization. This has
been perhaps one of the most important challenges due to the radical change in
the form of remote work that was implemented in most work environments.
Closeness and frequency are two of the most relevant
dimensions that our leaders highlighted: “We
are looking for more frequent and closer internal communication with employees,
despite home office and the internal policies for working under this format.” (Participant #4). The leaders
interviewed developed an agile response to the challenges of the environment,
because they did not have enough time to develop a strategic communication
plan. In some of the cases from one day to the next, they had to work remotely.
These
companies implemented diverse strategies related to internal marketing
communications during this contingency, such as virtual meetings for tracking
job performance, projects scripts and actions to maintain the corporate
culture, brand essence, and brand image; social media branding campaigns to be
closer to external customers; constant communication and feedback for employees
and; communication to ensure that all employees know about their access to
contingency support and benefits. “The
communication increased during COVID-19 crisis” (Participant 6). As Majerova et al.
(2021) suggested, an effective communication continues to be a big challenge in
the new normal the change in the patterns of internal marketing communication
that have affected the nature of humans as social beings; and a fundamental
pillar of organizational agility (Harraf et al.,
2015).
2.
Emotional well-being
Another relevant topic, repeatedly highlighted by business
leaders interviewed, was employees’ emotional well-being. They themselves have
had extended work hours in home office than before in offline work: “If we look back, we will realize that people
are tired of being in quarantine” (Participant
#5), Achieving work-life balance has surely been a challenge.
Additionally,
job uncertainty predominates because employees are fearful of losing their
jobs. They are being affected in their wages (there is a lower income, because
of lower financial performance in companies). Some companies have made wage
adjustments, lowering them to keep the enterprise alive and to promote
productivity (e.g. variable wages). All this scenario has caused the employees
to feel tired and unmotivated. However, a relevant insight is that young people
have adapted better than older ones to be more productive.
The
emotional well-being of employees during the contingency has been negatively
affected and is not optimal, just as Nemteanu and Dabija (2021) stated. Some enterprises report that their
employees are “trying to keep calm by
doing occupational therapy and avoiding news overexposure that generates fear”
(Participant #6). In contrast, other
companies have implemented personal care-related practices (e.g., birthday
cakes sent to the employees’ homes, so they could celebrate with their
families). A key takeaway is that little details can make the difference
between making our employees feel good or bad.
Employers
recognized that the focus during the contingency is on “providing support so that employees can keep their jobs and salaries”
(Participant #1). Some companies have highlighted the importance of
enhancing the employees' experience through a positive service climate
(Schneider, 1987; Schneider & Bowen, 1993), as well as offering them
facilities such as mental health care (i.e., access to psychologists for
employees and their families), and employee integration dynamics because of the
number of personal and job activities employees face every day, there is very
little time for attending social meetings). This shows that in some way, the
companies in the sample employ the principles of agility by responding quickly
to changes in the environment, developing organizational fluidity, managing
change, and organizational learning (Harraf et al.,
2015).
3.
Safety
A
third recurring theme was safety. The interviewed employers concluded that during
a contingency the best way to support employees is to “keep them safe and informed”.
These companies showed agility by providing protocols to keep them safe
in record time. “Our priority is to
create the perception that we worry about them on this crisis” (Participant
#1).
Some
of the initiatives were: campaigns for adopting COVID-19 protocols, and
explaining how employees can be safe from the virus; protocols aligned to
government and health regulations to promote employee safety from COVID-19 in
the workplace; medical support (i.e., access to medical consultations for
employees and their families and access to COVID-19 tests, or financial support
for taking the test); personal protection equipment for COVID-19 (e.g., mouth
covers, masks, gloves, antibacterial gel); sanitization areas at the work
facilities and workstations; access to nearby coworking spaces and
transportation services (to avoid the use of public service); and help to buy
groceries and provisions.
Lined
with de Lucas Ancillo et al. (2021), a priority for
companies is to help people keep their jobs and protect them from infection.
4.
Empowerment
Empowerment is a relevant topic even for agility (Harraf et al., 2015), so companies need to empower
employees so they can adapt faster to the new strategies (Žitkienė
& Deksnys, 2018), and for internal marketing in
order to maintain them motivated (Rafiq & Ahmed, 2000), so “employees can feel they are essential to
the organization” (Participant #6)
In this sense, some changes in the new work environment
are: home office schemes, flexible schedules, reduced working hours, and
optional in-person attendance in the workplace, which represents a challenge
for companies to trust their workers and empower them to take responsibility,
commit, fulfill their work and go beyond what is expected of them. “Some collaborators are used to receiving
instructions, but now they have to self-manage to perform their activities”
(Participant #3).
Some
of the new skills and competencies of the employee in this new normality are:
self-management and self-decision making (before COVID-19, employees were
directed by their superiors, now they are on their own most of the time),
better organization of time (since homeworking implies common family
interruptions, punctuality problems, distractions, obstacles), and working for
multitask departments, with multifunctional teams (each area learning tasks
from other areas to provide support when needed, as a result of job
dismissals).
5.
Digital tools management
For the reasons already mentioned, digital transformation accelerated
during the COVID era. These SMEs stated the integration of multi-platform
communication using digital tools, such as social media (Whatsapp,
Facebook), Zoom, Meet, Google Drive, and newsletters, among others.
We
also identified cases of companies giving support with office equipment and
workstations to their collaborators (e.g., computers, desks, monitors, internet
service, cellphones). As de Lucas Ancillo et al.
(2021) propose, taking advantage of technology, the contingency has brought new
and different digital tools for meetings, communication, tracking projects, and
monitoring performance and KPIs. The main challenge in this topic has been on “training employees in the use of digital
tools” (Participant #3), multitasking activities, and, especially, at the
front desk for customers and suppliers.
“A big challenge for the team is to be on time in virtual meetings”
(Participant #5).
After all the analysis and
discussion of results, we present below the resulting model (Fig. 1), which
summarizes the panorama of the challenges that companies face in this new
normality, that with an agile response have implemented internal marketing
actions.
Figure 1
Conceptual Model – Relationship between
Internal Marketing challenges and strategies, and organizational agility as a
booster
Conclusion
It is evident that the COVID-19 contingency has
changed work dynamics and organizations are facing important challenges
maintaining effective communication with their employees, keeping them
motivated, with optimal emotional well-being, supporting them and making them
feel accompanied, and protecting them from the infection.
According to the results of the qualitative study,
the main challenges on internal marketing that employers are facing are: to
maintain effective communication with their employees, to maintain them
motivated with optimal emotional wellbeing, to keep them safe from infections,
to support them, and make them feel empowered, and to give them the digital
tools to keep the business afloat.
Although it seems we are near the end of the
contingency, companies are still struggling with the effects of the changes in
the work environment, and the changes they were facing at the beginning of the
pandemic are still on the table. Companies need to move agilely by implementing
internal marketing strategies and providing protocols to keep employees safe
and motivated whenever a crisis comes knocking at the door. In fact, once the
pandemic is over, it is possible that companies will need to face a
post-pandemic scenario, in which once again the organizational agility would be
key; it is important to differentiate between “brilliant improvisation”
(Winter, 2003) and a repeatable capability.
Therefore,
organizational agility must be enabled. Leaders must develop a proactive and
innovative mindset to corner the market by flexibly assembling their people,
processes, and resources, as well as attending and solving these internal
marketing challenges fast and effectively. This organizational capability to
quickly respond to the internal or external changes is a key for a company to
survive; but also, it is a great opportunity to be transformed, and to
implement long-lasting changes that will enhance the dynamic of the company for
good.
Some
of the limitations of this investigation are that it is an exploratory study
with a convenience sample, and a qualitative methodology limited to a specific
context of companies in Monterrey, Mexico. Although this method allowed us to
deepen our understanding of the employers' perspective, a triangulation of
research methods would have been really useful. Therefore, for further
research, it would be interesting to explore and compare cases of companies to
identify the best internal marketing practices that emerged during COVID-19 and
promote to implement them further. We also could expand the sample size and
include company leaders of other regions of the country and even include the
perspective of employees on how they have responded to such internal marketing
initiatives. From the employees’ perspective to internal marketing challenges,
it could be relevant to explore if social distancing in the new remote work
schemes has driven digital transformation and whether it has affected human connection
and the work environment. Additionally, based on the conceptual model resulting
from this research, it would be possible to design a quantitative research
instrument and measure the relationships between the variables. Finally, it is
important to mention that literature about the relationship between
organizational agility and internal marketing is scarce, so this paper
contributes to extend the literature on the field.
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