In every boardroom across the land, there’s one buzzphrase: the social contract.
It’s a woolly sounding thing, but it essentially means doing right by the society you’re in, with the reward that society does right by you in return.
We’re seeing it in spades through Covid. Companies, for the most part, have behaved pretty decently, be they supermarkets feeding NHS workers or executives shedding bonuses and dividends.
In return, the Government has extended generous funding to get them through the crisis with surprisingly little protest from taxpayers who are paying for it all.
For the first time, possibly since the crisis of 9/11, the public is realising that we need businesses. Not just to employ us — although that is uppermost in most people’s minds — but to provide the critical services and little luxuries that make life fun.
The fact that businesses have, by and large, had a good war makes me hope that the post-financial crisis bashing of the private sector might be receding.
Sure, there have been exceptions — step forward Boohoo and Quiz. Hat-tip to Wetherspoons’ pantomime villain, Tim Martin. But most firms are vying to be seen to do the right thing. They use the rhetoric of “resetting” the economy post-Covid to become more inclusive, green and equal.
Much of it is PR flannel, but if it means Vodafone is to power its entire European network with renewable energy, as announced today, what’s not to like?
While business is enjoying a rare moment of public sympathy now, it remains to be seen whether that lasts as the toll of job losses gathers pace.
The end of state-funded furloughing in October will test the social contract to the max. But hopefully employers will treat their workforces with decency even as they let some go.
After all, if Covid has taught us one thing, it’s that we’re all in this together.
