44 news extra Manage that crisis James White, managing director of Media First, considers some of the issues
Crisis management, business continuity plans, contingency planning and disaster recovery planning. These phrases are commonplace in today’s modern workplace. Most businesses plan for the worst and hope it never happens. If you don’t, then perhaps you should.
Early in my career when I was an aspiring manager, I was invited to join the business continuity team of my company. Following our training, our objective was to develop and implement a business continuity plan for the company. We were unsurprisingly advised to plan for the worst and hope it never happens. We were also reminded that a crisis didn’t need to be a full-blown catastrophe. It could be as simple as our telephone lines or email system failing. Alternatively it may be a product failure, affecting our customers.
It was a complex business – a mixture of research, administration and training. It would have been impossible for us to develop a plan for every eventuality. So instead we focused on ensuring that people were appropriately trained and that clear lines and methods of communications were in place.
Over the past 36 months, Media First (a specialist in communications and media training) has seen a substantial increase in the number of finance directors we are training to manage the media during a crisis. These directors are now looking to play a more active role in the brand protection of their business. Perhaps this is because they are so acutely aware of the amount of time and money that is spent in building the brand in the first place.
In April, Tesco announced a drop in UK profits. For a company with a UK trading profit of £2.48 billion, this may not seem like much of a crisis. But records going back to 1986 indicate that Tesco has never recorded an annual fall in profits from its UK supermarkets.
Tesco CFO Laurie McIlwee was a key spokesperson on the day this news was announced. I was one of around six million
people listening to his interview on BBC Radio 5Live. What was the ultimate message I came away with? That Tesco was investing £1b into improving the shopping experience of its customers. It was to employ more staff on the shop floor as well as aiming for “better” products, prices and promotions. Crisis well handled.
To effectively manage the media in a crisis you need to understand the journalist’s agenda. What do their audiences want and what ingredients make a good story? From there you can then work out how to control your interviews to best protect or enhance your brand reputation.
What would have happened if Tesco had simply said "no comment"? Well, if there is one lesson that we can all learn from past reported crises, it is that the media will always fill a silence. In this case they may have gone to an industry ‘expert’ who may have declared this the end of Tesco’s domination of supermarket shopping. They may have even targeted a rival chain which would have welcomed the publicity and seen it as a perfect platform for promoting its own brand whilst explaining why it was now preferential to Tesco. Imagine all this against a backdrop of a faceless “no comment” from the Tesco press team.
The media should form part of all crisis management plans. Journalists could be key to helping you communicate quickly, accurately and in a cost-effective manner with your customers.
Is the media included in your plan? Top tips for managing the media during a crisis:
1. Designate staff – ideally by job title not name – to form a media response team.
2. Ensure that you are well practised and trained to engage with the media. An inexperienced or unpracticed spokesperson or an off the cuff comment could make things worse.
SEGRO welcomes new businesses
SEGRO has welcomed new companies to Slough Trading Estate. CCC Roofing & Cladding, which specialises in industrial, commercial and residential roofing and cladding systems; Surface Technology plc, a specialist surface coatings provider; Breanga Wholesales, a wholesale retailer, and Eden Car Restorations are all set to occupy space at the trading estate.
Surface Technology will occupy a 5,849 sq ft unit on 711 Banbury Avenue, which will be used as a warehouse, after signing a 10-year lease. Eden Car Restorations is
www.businessmag.co.uk
moving into a 1,550 sq ft unit on 236 Berwick Avenue, signing a five-year lease. Breanga Wholesales secured a 2,572 sq ft unit on 270 Argyll Avenue, signing a three-year lease; whist CCC Roofing & Cladding will use its new unit at 514 Ipswich Road for the storage and distribution of roofing and cladding products, signing a three-year lease.
Lee Clark, managing director of CCC Roofing & Cladding, commented: “Opening at Slough Trading Estate will allow us to provide the most efficient, reliable and cost-effective service to our clients. Our new facility will
3. Ensure that you have a list of all the local media with all their contact details. You may even be able to use the media to help you communicate to your customers during a crisis. The list should contain trade, local, regional and key national contacts.
4. Regular updates are vital. You should give an initial statement as soon as possible – even if you don’t know all the facts yet. At the end of the statement you should tell the media when and where they can get more information.
5. Use your website and social media pages to communicate with your customers and the media.
6. Be honest. Don’t try and cover anything up. Explain what you know and that there will be a thorough review to understand more in due course.
7. Don’t be afraid to apologise or show empathy. Many people fear that an apology is an admission of guilt but all it really shows is that you are a human capable of demonstrating compassion.
Details: James White
www.mediafirst.co.uk 01635-577507 07814-016198
also enable us to meet customer demand as well as provide quality services. We hope future growth, fuelled by Berkshire-based customers, will lead to additional recruitment needs, providing jobs for Slough-based professionals.”
Nicola Webb of SEGRO added: “We are pleased to welcome these new businesses to the Trading Estate. It is the wide variety of companies based here that continue to make it a great environment in which to operate. We will continue to invest in Slough by redeveloping and building new facilities in order to attract new companies to the region.”
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – JUNE 2012
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