The importance of Crisis Management has not been something I put much thought into through uni. However during my placement I have come to change that perspective. I have since seen two examples of effective plans that were put into place, communicating the key messages whilst ensuring a positive outcome for all parties.
The first occurred when a cyclist was incautious and did not observe a signed diversion and injured him self. The head event managers handled this and they made sure the cyclists had all of the medical attention he required before ensuring he got home safely. Following this stakeholders were made aware of the situation that had occurred and how it had been handled. All documentation regarding the diversion was collated ready for presentation to the media. The event organisers brought in the action groups and walked through the diversion to outline were they believed the problems were. This was then amended that day.
The overall result was positive with not a single injury after and no negative media coverage!
3 comments:
Hi Jane!
Your post today reminded of a conversation I had with my supervisor at my placement. He was just telling me the other day that he and his wife had pulled their kids out of childcare because of an incident that had occurred during an excursion. I'm not too sure of the exact details but somehow two children managed to wander off whilst they were organising the class to leave. The teachers panicked and started to search for these kids, finding them a couple of blocks away. One of the teachers, in her concern that the incident would go public, told the kids that they shouldn't tell their parents of what had happened. But some kids went home telling their parents that they had a secret they werent allowed to share. Predictably, the parents found out in the end and there was a outbreak of complaints. The childcare centre is now looking at losing alot of customers as parents have started to pull their kids out and organised P&F meetings with the principal.
My supervisor expressed his concern, not so much on that the incident had occurred, but that the teachers had tried to hide the crisis from them and they had found out through the kids! We dicussed how it would have been better if the teachers had told the parents of the incident and then taken action to avoided it occurring again in the future.
I think the key in a crisis is TRANSPARENCY!!
Accidents do happen as your illustration and mine have just shown. But when they do happen, its important that organisations be truthful about it, properly inform their stakeholders and show the measures they will take to ensure it does not happen again. Your organisation did the right thing but providing appropraite assistance, informing the public and then showing what they were doing to solve the situation and never occur again.
I agree completely!
One thing my supervisor would always advice me to do was to be ready to take full responsibility at all costs in times of crisis regardless of who is at fault. An excellent P.R is with no doubt the mother and father of an organization, and points no fingers. Taking the cyclist case as an example, one would feel it was also his/her responsibility to mend for his own safety but nevertheless, the P.R team stood its ground and took responsibility just like a parent would do for his/her 'notorious' daughter.
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