Editor’s Note: Prudential Financial is a Fortune 500 company that provides insurance and financial products to retail and institutional customers in the US and 40+ countries. It is one of the companies that suspended donations to lawmakers in the wake of violence at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6.
Alan Sexton became its CCO late last year after joining the company in 2018. He reports to vice chair Rob Falzon. Prior to that he led the U.S. corporate and financial practice at Burson-Marsteller. Sexton believes PR pros, who work throughout the enterprise are vital to succeeding within business ecosystems. In addition, he’s tracking the employee experience in a WFH world, with an eye to avoiding cultural decay. His responses were edited for space.
PRNEWS: What trends are on your radar for 2021? How are you are preparing?
Alan Sexton: The growing importance of business ecosystems is a powerful trend we’ve been watching very closely.
PRNEWS: Tell us about that.
Sexton: Business ecosystems are combinations of companies that work together to create value in ways that can’t be achieved by a single business working alone, or through traditional, linear operating models. Ecosystems tend to be complex, involve large and small entities, and evolve quickly.
Many of today’s business ecosystems center around technology companies, like Apple, Amazon, Tencent or Alibaba, but the concept is also taking root in other sectors, including financial services.
If you want to succeed in a business ecosystem, you must be able to navigate and manage multiple, interwoven relationships and issues. You need to understand how each participant in the ecosystem is collaborating, contributing, innovating and competing at any given time, and how to manage emerging risks and opportunities.
PRNEWS: How do communicators figure into this?
Sexton:To do all this well, you need a holistic and multidisciplinary perspective, which communications functions are well placed to provide. Communications teams are engaged across every aspect of an enterprise. They understand how the organization is seen from multiple vantage points: inside out and outside in. This means communicators can play an important role in helping our organizations, and leaders, succeed in an ecosystem-driven world.
PRNEWS: A second trend?
Sexton: It’s not new, but it accelerated last year and will continue to grow in importance in 2021, and that’s the emphasis on employee experience. This is something we spend a lot of time on already.
The rapid shift last year to remote work really highlighted how much employees’ experiences are shaped by informal interactions with colleagues in a physical setting.
In a virtual environment, employers have to work harder to create meaningful connections for their employees, or they risk what leaders refer to as ‘cultural decay,’ which has all sorts of implications for productivity and performance.
The employee experience also has reputation implications. One of the fastest ways for a consumer, investor, prospective employee or business partner to learn about the inner workings of an organization is to listen to what current and former employees say about it. Glassdoor and other online and social media forums make this possible.
PRNEWS: Maintaining and enhancing Prudential’s reputation is part of your remit. Tell us how you’re doing that.
Sexton: The traumas of 2020 reminded us of the power of active, open, empathetic listening. We’re going to do a lot of active listening to our stakeholders across the US and around the world to help us understand how Prudential is viewed and what we can do to maintain and build trust.
We’re also going to remain focused on the purpose, values and principles that underpin our company. Together, those form the bedrock on which our reputation is built.
PRNEWS: How do you see communication playing a strategic role in Prudential’s business?
Sexton: When you optimize the communications function, as we are doing within Prudential, you can provide the business with a real competitive advantage. The 360-degree perspective that communicators can provide–from the outside in and inside out–enables us to be valuable contributors to Prudential’s decision-making process. This is particularly true in a landscape that is being shaped and reshaped by established and emerging business ecosystems.
PRNEWS: Best advice learned during the pandemic?
Sexton: That necessity truly is the mother of invention. The pandemic forced many companies–ours included–to reorient their outlook from ‘Is that really possible?’ to ‘Let’s get it done!’ Prudential managed to achieve many things during the pandemic that we might previously have considered impossible, or not worth the risk.
PRNEWS: Such as?
Sexton: We moved more than 20,000 US employees to remote working in little more than 24 hours. In the past twelve months, we’ve launched products, accelerated the pace of our transformation, completed major international transactions and recruited, onboarded and developed employees– all virtually. The past year has opened our eyes to just how much we can achieve when we are forced to think differently about the way we work.
PRNEWS: What are your priorities?
Sexton: To use the company’s communication resources and expertise to accelerate Prudential’s transformation, which began in 2019 and became even more urgent as the pandemic hit last year.
With that in mind, my second priority is to complete the transformation of the communications function so that our talent, technology and operating model are ready to meet and anticipate Prudential’s business needs.
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