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When things go wrong
When things go wrong
It’s when things go wrong that threats to your organisation’s reputation suddenly come into the sharpest focus. When news of a damaging or potentially damaging event reaches or is at risk of reaching any of your most important audiences, your PR agency should be able to work very quickly to advise on words and deeds that will minimise negative responses. Examples might include:
- Employment disputes – In an employee-relations dispute, such as a work to rule or strike, you will need special communications preparing for a wide range of audiences, not least your customers, who may be concerned about supply. Doing this in a way that does not inflame the dispute and hopefully contributes towards resolving it requires experienced handling.
- Employment tribunal – If facing an employment tribunal, you will need good advice and careful planning for communications to many key audiences before and after the hearing.
- Accusations of misleading the public – Accusations that an organisation has misled the public in its advertising and promotions, or provided exceptionally poor value for money, may give rise to highly damaging public criticisms from individuals or from trading standards or advertising standards authorities. If your initial belief is that the criticisms are unjustified, it’s crucial to be disciplined about the response, and to demonstrate more integrity than indignation. If the criticisms are proven to be largely justified, then a frank apology and commitment to put things right will probably be the best approach. A good PR professional will help to make sure you get the tone just right.
- Threats to health and safety of the public – This might result from your own identified failures of your products or services, or from some malicious intervention in your organisation. For example, in the food and drink industry, the possibility of product contamination is a major concern. The situation might well require a public statement to alert and reassure customers or organisations in the supply chain, who may be required to play their part in a product recall. It may also require the drafting of statements reporting outcomes from investigations.
- Threats to healthy and safety of employees – If you discover something, or are accused of failing to prevent something that is said to represent a threat to the health and safety of employees, then certainly internal communications will need careful handling. But plans will also need to be made concerning external communications because if the story is revealed externally, by whatever means, it will have wider implications for the reputation of your organisation.
- Accusations of causing serious loss – Worst of all is when an organisation needs to cope with accusations of having caused a member of the public or employee, or even a trade partner to suffer serious loss, or injury, or even death. If litigation ensues, your lawyers and insurers will organise the legal response, but commonly their advice on media interest is to adopt the most cautious approach – a total block on statements. This may suit the legal process but it could also mean that any public attacks on the reputation of your organisation are left undefended. In other words, taking the short-term view could allow the seeds to be sewn of long-term reputational damage, which becomes much more difficult to repair the longer it is left. Instead, make sure you have expert PR advice from the outset. A PR professional should be able to work in partnership with your lawyers and insurers to produce statements that are carefully crafted not to be prejudicial or contemptuous to legal proceedings, while also serving to calm the media storm, and minimise reputational damage. You will need good-quality PR advice through every stage of a litigation process, and especially in dealing with the outcome.
- Accusations of unethical trading or exploitation of trade partners – All organisations that could be accused of trading unethically or of exploiting trade partners should conduct an audit to make sure that they are performing to the expected standards of corporate social responsibility. They also need to be aware of the pressure groups that might be interested in analysing their methods of working so that preparations can be made to respond to unexpected criticisms positively. An experienced PR adviser should be able to identify and analyse the key interest groups, guide you through the issues, and minimise any risks to the reputation of your organisation.
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