In The News
How a crisis and a substandard media response to that event can affect an organisation’s reputation has been thrown into sharp relief by several recent occurrences concerning the Confederation of British Industry and the tragic death of Ruth Perry.
Events such as these will often necessitate a media response. Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman, for example, appeared on BBC 1's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme after Perry's death was linked to her school's 'inadequate' grade from the watchdog.
Likewise, the CBI was forced to respond after a number of its members announced they were suspending or ending their membership. This was due to allegations of sexual misconduct, misogyny and illicit drug taking at the confederation.
There are different examples of when a provider will have to respond to unplanned media interest. The tragic events in Nottingham a matter of weeks ago, where two university students and a school caretaker were killed, are one such example where the university and the school naturally had to respond.
Events such as these, and many more besides, will necessitate a response from providers which communicates to stakeholders what has happened, what caused it, what it means to them and what the response will be.
This sort of response is often termed ‘crisis communications’. So how can providers put together a crisis communications strategy to handle the attention more effectively?
Professor Will Harvey, international research fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, wrote for Management Today that a reputational crisis such as what the CBI is facing requires organisations to:
Deal with the issues at hand.
Acknowledge the things they have done wrong.
Demonstrate they can provide future value.
Writing for Harvard Business Review, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik use the example of a film crew as a unit that are used to dealing with surprises and crises on a regular basis. A “critical factor” in their response to crises is ensuring a familiarity with everyone else’s work and an understanding of how their various tasks fit together.
Misinformation is another factor that providers must be aware of in a crisis. Jeanette Sutton, a disaster and risk communication expert, highlighted in Harvard Business Review how, to combat misinformation and provide a source of accurate, timely facts following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the US Government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency set up a “rumour page” to actively correct misinformation as staff became aware of it.
All those examples demonstrate how proper preparation is key to an organisation effectively responding to crisis. But what is best practice for a provider preparing its crisis communications strategy? Also, how can providers cope after the story breaks?
Interview
This month, senior leadership consultant and experienced college leader Graham Morley has discussed his experience of managing crises and why effective communication is so important.
How crucial are communications to the effective handling of a crisis in a college?
I’ve found one of the things that typifies almost all failing colleges is poor communication. It was always obvious to me that good internal and external communication is an essential element of running a good college in all circumstances. But it particularly comes into stark focus during a crisis. If you've got a bedrock of good communication to start off with, managing a crisis becomes a lot easier.
Staff need to believe that they know their leader, and they need a vision for the future. You have to establish a bedrock of trust, transparency and honesty. For example, when I went into a college in difficulty, the first thing I did was talk to the whole staff and introduce myself.
My message was, ‘this is what I'm here to do’ and ‘this is the way I see it at this moment’. I would also say ‘you are going to have to bear with me, I don't know it all yet and you know far more than me, so I want to be talking to you and I want you to talk to me’. That was my key message. Then I would meet with staff regularly and make it known that I would welcome their emails.
I’ve found at the start in some colleges, staff can be very reticent to actually put their hand up or ask a question. There can be a culture whereby if somebody had asked a difficult or challenging question, they could find themselves on top of the redundancy list the following week, something indicative of bad communication and a badly run college.
Staff in FE colleges are very intelligent people. One of the things I know from experience is that individual staff members, and staff collectively, deal with crises better when they know what they're dealing with.
Similarly, for external stakeholders, I found they gain confidence if they know who you are, can contact you and look you in the eye. They need to hear you explaining what the issues are, and then how you're going to get them resolved even if you don't know all the answers. You get an enormous amount of credibility in the early days of managing a crisis by saying, I don't know that yet.
Do you think the number of trigger events for crises in colleges (e.g., negative Ofsted reports, ESFA notices to improve) has increased?
I’m not sure but I do know that when a college is well led and managed, there is always the potential for things to go wrong.
I remember in the old days, before I was a principal, David Collins [a former principal and FE Commissioner] would ensure we'd have to have a crisis management plan in place, covering who was responsible for what. Then without any warning to anybody, he would just launch a practice crisis. We’d then run it through as if it were real. Afterwards, we'd have a debrief and we'd think through what went right and what went wrong, and it was a really, good, sensible thing to do.
If you have a bedrock of good communication to start off with, managing a crisis becomes a lot easier
And it's what I did when I was a principal. For example, I remember on one of the initial practice runs the duty manager had to go and stand by reception, as the person responsible for managing the crisis. But what we realised is they couldn’t communicate or hear anyone over the alarm, which is why it’s important to practice, to find out these things.
With Ofsted grades, I do think the stakes have got higher. I think we've moved more to a time where principals are treated a bit like football team managers. You have a couple of bad games and you can very quickly lose your position.
During your time as a principal, did you put in place any measures to prepare or improve a college's ability to communicate during a crisis, such as additional training for staff?
Yes. One of the first things I did when I became principal, because of the experience I'd had working for David Collins and what I'd noticed over the years, was to set up media training for myself. For example, I didn't want the first time I was doorstepped to involve having a mic shoved in front of my mouth as I pulled up at the college!
To that end, I went away with the senior team for a few days to practice different scenarios. I also ensured managers knew what was expected of them at induction.
Even though I never went on to be doorstepped, I wanted to ensure I would always be able to present myself as articulately as I could.
In your experience, has misinformation been a common problem during crises and where has that originated from?
There's always been room for misinformation but the better the communication, the less room there is for misinformation to spread.
I saw a tweet a couple of weeks ago saying that staff don't read 90 per cent of emails. I’m not sure whether this is factually correct but it does indicate that communication isn’t just about sending out an all-staff email. I focused on one-to-one meets, group meetings and getting all staff together often.
The more staff understand what's going on in a crisis, the more they understand the narrative and what's being said in the press, the less room there is for gossip and hearsay. I used to say if you haven't heard it from me, don't believe it. If you've got a question, ask me, I'll tell you.
Expert Advice
Ensuring your provider is ‘crisis ready’
Our Managing Director William Walter outlines how providers can best prepare for crises and how they ought to act and react once the story breaks.
Having the right measures in place to deliver an effective media response when a crisis strikes will go a long way towards protecting the provider's and its stakeholders’ reputation.
The following points are intended to put a provider on the best footing to respond to a crisis, whatever it may be.
Put a strategy together
It is well worth provider leaders sitting down now and drawing up a crisis communications strategy. This ought to have all the details they will need to respond to media and stakeholder concerns. But it should be adaptable enough to be used across a range of different crises.
The strategy ought to include the following information:
Contact details for stakeholders such as governors, SLT, employer partners, and relevant DfE and local authority politicians/officials.
Instructions on how to respond to media enquiries for all staff. This should include stating which single person is responsible for media and stakeholder engagement during a crisis. They will be the one coordinating press releases and responding to any media enquiries.
A plan for social media and information channels. Should the provider stop tweeting about different goings-on from the provider? Should the website be shut down for a time? Make this decision now and include it in the strategy. Maybe make different decisions for different crises. But save having to make a tricky decision when the crisis strikes.
As well as creating this strategy, providers should start monitoring the risks to your college’s reputation. Most businesses, and many of you reading this, will RAG the risks to your operation. Provider leaders ought to make sure this risk register is up to date, gives an accurate picture of the likelihood of different events, and covers the broadest range of possible risks.
Provider leaders should not confine themselves to preparing a response to events that they have more time to prepare for, such as negative Ofsted reports and government interventions in the provider's management. Consider what can happen out of the blue but will have significant ramifications for staff, students, and stakeholders and will necessitate a public reaction from the provider.
Bridgehead has sat in a number of conference workshops where the speaker has discussed being ‘Ofsted ready’. Provider leaders and marketing and communications teams need to be ‘crisis ready’.
Start building ties with local media now
A provider's relationship with the local media can help shape the coverage of the crisis. A warmer relationship will mean a media outlet is more amendable to discussions about how the story can be presented. Whereas a cold, or even hostile, relationship between a provider and a media outlet can make the journalists less favourable to the provider's side of the story, and more favourable to an interpretation of events that casts the provider in the worst possible light.
The work on this starts now. Reach out to local media outlets. The major regional and local newspapers, local BBC and commercial radio stations and TV stations will be the best place to start as, in a crisis, their stories will have the highest readership and have the greatest potential for harming reputations.
Provider leaders and PRs can build positive relationships with the journalists at these outlets by sending them a regular flow of newsworthy content. But also by inviting them to events and asking them to meet to discuss how the provider and outlet can work together.
They may not take the provider up on these opportunities but creating familiarity with them will help ensure a clear line of communication when it’s most needed.
How to act after the crisis strikes
When it breaks that something seriously wrong has taken place at or with a provider, the pace will suddenly accelerate to 100mph. The phone will be ringing off the hook, inboxes will be filling up, and there will be staff, students, parents, and stakeholders demanding answers.
A provider's level of preparedness will depend on the crisis. But, regardless of the type of crisis, there are several key principles to follow that will help handle any fallout:
Stick to the plan. If a crisis communications strategy has been prepared, make sure everyone is sticking to it. Staff members should be directing media enquiries to the relevant person and fulfilling their roles, whether that’s answering phones or signing off media comments.
Be open and transparent. Stick to approved statements and answers, but providers should not attempt to conceal information and should not try to mislead. If a journalist issues a request for more information, the proper response is to speak with colleagues, and determine whether it is in the provider’s best interests to release that information.
Speak to stakeholders. The employers, organisations, and families that you work with will be spooked when they start seeing media articles or social media posts about the crisis. Make sure they understand the facts of the situation and what the provider is doing to remedy the situation.
These steps are the building blocks of an effective crisis communications response.