Prioritising Crisis Communications

“Preparing for crisis!? We are in crisis!”

It may feel too late to prepare for crisis while in the middle of Covid-19, the biggest medical and economic crisis that we will likely face in our lifetime, but it is never, ever too late.

There is no better time to prioritise crisis communications than now.

Having worked at the heart of the communications function (as Head of Communications for the UK Airline) when Thomas Cook sadly collapsed in September 2019, I had first-hand experience of managing crisis communications with stakeholders including the media, employees and shareholders.

It was a period of intense scrutiny and pressure, but it was one that I had trained for. I was grateful for the annual crisis communications training sessions and quarterly crisis simulation exercises that we took part in. Crisis communications planning was always a top priority, driven from the board.

When those training sessions came around, I never felt like I had the time to spare. We all know what those training days in the diary can feel like – an inconvenience in your already time pressured week. Speaking from experience, when crisis strikes, you will be thankful that you took that time away to think, scenario plan, prepare and practice.

My client, Sigma Capital Group plc put crisis communications planning at the top of their priority list. With their build-to-rent UK property portfolio, Simple Life Homes growing at pace, the potential for tenant-related issues, increasing engagement on social media and interest from the news media was something that they wanted to be set up to manage.

I delivered a tailored, half-day crisis communications training session and workshop for the marketing and social media team to help them prepare and be better equipped to deal with issues, prevent escalations and manage them when they happen.

The session took place at the end of February 2020, less than a month before Covid-19 gained momentum. The team was already doing a fantastic job managing customer issues and understood the importance of reputation management, so we looked at what reputation really meant to them, to their customers and other stakeholders. We discussed how that manifested itself in the landscape today, scenario planned, looked at challenges and opportunities and lots of examples and discussion around the good and the bad of crisis communications. We ran a live exercise that was real to the business (as realistic as possible) and the team came up with solutions and statements over short, scenario-based sprints. Throughout the session we looked at practical tips, hints and tools to implement in a variety of real-life issues and crisis scenarios.

Fast forward to just a month later, and the Sigma team is equipped, prepared and implementing many of those tools and techniques during the Covid-19 crisis - albeit a lot quicker than they expected to be. You can read what Sigma have to say here.

Now is the time to put crisis communications planning at the top of your priority list. Perhaps you have a little more time away from the day to day at the moment to think about where the gaps are, or what could do with a refresher? Could the crisis communications plan/manual you have always wanted to put in place but never felt you had the time to do be developed? Do you have a newly remote working team that would benefit from a crisis communications training session, delivered over Zoom?

If you would like a confidential discussion (and for the avoidance of doubt, no charge for a chat!) about crisis communications, be it for strategic consultation or hands-on support for Covid-19 related communications, or on implementing some training and crisis communications planning, please get in touch.