Crisis? What Crisis?
August 2011 by Charlotte TaylorMany organisations do not have a health approach to Crisis Communications, they think they can stick their head in the sand, say no comment and everything will go away. Believe me it won’t!
We work closely with all our clients to make sure that they recognise the importance of dealing with a crisis in an open, honest and timely way.
The world of communications has changed, these days as something happens it is on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. There is now instant access to images, video and words.
People need to have confidence in the team they employ to handle their crisis in the right way. We can all think of CEOs of large organisations who have done this badly and had their mistakes repeated on TV channels across the globe.
We pride ourselves in our handling of crisis situations. Our list of services clearly states that we manage Crisis Communications. This is not uncommon for a PR agency to say but saying you provide it and actually driving a client through a high profile crisis is something very different indeed.
We offer a 24/7 Crisis Communications service – we simply have to. Over the last decade the demands of the media have changed and with stories breaking online every minute of the day we have had to adapt to be able to meet these demands.
Working with our health clients, which include NHS Trusts, a GP Consortium, health charities, medical insurance providers and a global healthcare company, we help them to put a Crisis Communications plan in place to help guide them through a crisis situation. And just to be clear – we are not talking about a bit of reactive PR, responding to a journalists query with a statement or setting up an interview – we are talking CRISIS.
Once these plans are in place we test them, then we test them...and then we test them again. The classic scenario is that the CEO has the crisis plan, has bought into it and understands what needs to be done should the worst happen, and when it does the CEO is away and the rest of the team panic.
Or the crisis plan is well read and understood by all a Senior Management Team, it holds all the key numbers of people who need to be contacted in a crisis and is stored on everyone’s desktops but the crisis involves electrical failure.
Both of the above can, and have happened, which is why you really need to think carefully about what can go wrong. For me, I guess I would say this, the first call any CEO should be making once they have been alerted to any crisis and are sure that everything is being done to manage people’s safety is to the communications team.
Once alerted they can put the plan into action and work to ensure that communication, both internal and external, is high up on the agenda.
Our Crisis Communications service has been well tested over the years and our team is fully trained to sensitively navigate you through any situation.
