Organizations Must Adapt to Remote Decision-Making by Holding Digital Annual General Meetings During and After the Covid-19 Crisis
Swae can help Organizations Adopt a Digital-First Mindset
The Annual General Meeting (AGM) season is fast-approaching and with the outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), it has left many companies wondering how to approach their upcoming AGMs and asking questions like:
How do we make this 100% virtual and safe for our shareholders?
How do we meet our legal obligation to ensure we’re compliant of bylaws?
How can we make this digital transition as painless as possible and ensure we can trust the platform that we choose?
How do we make this 100% inclusive and accessible if it’s online?
How do we do this quickly and without a large investment?
Due to the growing travel concerns and social distancing requirements in place for most of the globe, physical in-person meetings for AGMs cannot happen. Regulating authorities have issued guidelines and measures to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and now companies must seek the right technologies to address these concerns.
Leadership is now required to change the traditional approach to adopt the digital frontier, and now more than ever people need the right tools, platforms, and safe environments to make high quality collective decisions about many things that remain uncertain.
OUR ANSWER: DIGITAL ANNUAL GENERAL MEETINGS (AGMs) BY SWAE
Swae’s team has responded quickly to this need by creating a Digital Annual General Meetings (AGMs) product that provides a safe, secure, accurate, and transparent environment allowing every critical shareholder to attend.
The major advantages of holding a virtual/digital AGM
- Every shareholder gets a voice in a safe and secure environment
- Companies can say goodbye to paper
- The transparent nature of the digital AGM allows for a more inclusive meeting and more stakeholders to have a voice
- Allows for an online voting system with data received in real-time
- During a time of any crisis, all persons involved can participate from the safety of their own homes
May 2020 — Launching Swae for Digital Annual General Meetings
Thankfully, virtual meetings have been increasing in popularity and growing numbers of companies and organizations have adopted this online-only or online-hybrid method of communicating with their stakeholders or shareholders.
In recent years, high-profile companies such as Comcast, Intel, Starbucks, Paypal, and Hewlett Packard having held virtual-only AGMs. Even Lululemon (NASDAQ: LULU), a Delaware company based in Vancouver, conducted its AGM completely virtually, leading to local media coverage and a debate over the use of virtual AGMs.
Given the time we live in, we expect to see similar acceptance of the online forum among most Canadian companies and organizations.
Making the switch after years of traditional annual meetings doesn’t need to be stress-inducing, but involves a change of mindset, adoption of new technologies and processes. Making the switch with Swae’s new digital AGM product can make it easier than one would imagine.
VIEW SWAE’S DIGITAL AGM PRODUCT (AVAILABLE NOW MAY 2020)!
