Crisis Comms: Our Live Whitepaper Contributor’s Panel
Last week, we hosted an event based on our Crisis Comms Whitepaper in association with the IABC. If you haven’t read it already, then make sure to download yourself a copy!
In the event, we brought together some of the contributors from the whitepaper including;
- Ken Armistead – EMEA Comms Director at PPG
- Rachel Tolhurst – Head of Corporate Communications at Amey
- Laura Desert – Internal Communications Manager at City Fibre
- Howard Krais – Communications Lead at Johnson Matthey
- Ann-Marie – Comms Consultant working for a Top Tier Bank
Check out the full session below:
Both us as the host and guests posed questions to the panel, to gain some deeper insight on how they tackled communications during the pandemic. Here is just a snippet of the insight that was gained at the event.
Q- How did you manage a solid balance in comms between regions and employee roles?
“It is very rare that you are ever going to create a message that fits everyone. As a global business you need to always portray a consistent message, but one that can be tailored to work locally. So, for example, we have been given guidance from our HSE experts to develop a colour alert system. So different places are given a specific colour, then there is clear guidance based on each of these colour levels for employees to revert to.” – Howard Krais, Johnson Matthey
Q– It has become common for many people to focus on how businesses are struggling, but are there any examples of when business has spiked?
“We experienced a spike in the financial services industry when the Government announced its loan schemes. The Government announced them all of a sudden and something that under normal circumstances would have taken us years to create we had to pull together in 7 days. At one point, we did three years’ worth of lending in a week.” – Ann-Marie, Top Tier Bank
Q- How has this impacted your engagement levels?
“Our channel and engagement stats have been the best we have ever experienced for 6 months now across social, external and internal. We have had over one million people see our positive stories in two and a half months. In Yammer, a platform we had never previously focused on, we experienced a 4,500% increase in usage during lockdown.”– Rachel Tolhurst, Amey