Public Sector Issues and Crisis Management
With the best will in the world, things don’t always turn out as we’d like them. Sometimes things just go wrong.
From a death in custody to an outbreak of legionnaire’s disease, a crisis can strike at any time and can pose a serious threat to corporate reputation. And unfortunately for high profile public organisations, crises do not have the common courtesy of announcing their arrival. They just land on your doorstep fully-grown and ready to wreak havoc.
Crisis management support
Preparation is key to successfully managing a crisis, and although you cannot possibly predict every disaster that may come your way, you can prepare your organisation for how it will respond in the event of a crisis.
We can help you develop a robust crisis communications plan to ensure you are able to respond quickly and confidently when disaster strikes. Having a plan in place will help you minimise the risk of inaccurate information being released or a complete breakdown of communication that may result in the loss of public confidence and irreparable damage to your corporate reputation.
We can also provide on-the-ground communication support as needed, providing hands-on support and objective advice on reputation issues arising as a result of a crisis.
Although many crises come straight out of the blue, sometimes they can arise as a result of an ongoing issue that has been poorly managed and allowed to escalate out of control. In these situations, issues management is key.
Professional issues management
Issues management is a very effective technique for preventing an issue becoming a full-blown crisis. It allows you to identify and track the growth of issues affecting your organisation and to strategically develop your corporate response to them.
The issues that may threaten your corporate reputation will be many and varied and will fluctuate according to the social and political landscape. Keeping on top of these is vital if you are to keep an issue contained.
We provide an ‘environmental scanning’ and issues management service to public sector organisations, using our sector intelligence and organisational learning to tease out the issues that matter to you and applying our communications expertise to help you shape and manage your corporate response.