Public relations is a business practice that is increasingly becoming indispensable in the current corporate set up, as companies strive to control their business environments. In order to sustain either current operational success or chart a certain future, companies have resulted to ensuring that business processes are predictable, and that those areas where the companies can foresee incidents are managed using proper procedures, and that any business crises that arise can be properly mitigated using well structured operational and public relations methodologies.
Using Proactive Planning In Public Relations
A public relations manager can best use the company’s knowledge of its own business processes and create strategies that generate free publicity, with the side intention of promoting the positive aspects of a specific brand. A plan that exploits this opportunity is known as Proactive Public Relations Planning. Once potential and foreseeable threats, emergencies or crises are identified in all aspects of the business beforehand, it is prudent to employ strategies that can later be used to prevent negative occurrences from happening, or to mitigate them as and when they happen. Dwelling on the strengths and opportunities that the brand presents before disaster strikes can be a good way of enabling a sure way of ethically reducing the commercial, social and geo-political costs of these emergencies.
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Feedback Mechanism For The Greenergy Rotor Blade Accident Crisis Management
Being a new employee, the Public Relations Manager will need to acquaint him/herself quickly to the factors that have brought about the accident. Some of the questions that need to immediately come into play are;
Is there a proactive crisis management plan already in place?
Did it already have routine maintenance and access control for picnickers in place?
If two employees already flouted company procedures, what is happening now?
Several options exist. If there was no proactive planning for crises that could arise, then the manager should result into a reactive plan that seeks to limit the damage that the current situation is causing. This can be done in the following way;
Convene and use a multi-disciplinary crisis response team
This team could consist of the CEO, the PR Manager, the maintenance manager, the marketing manager, the training manager, Human Resource manager, a health and safety officer and a legal representative. An initial meeting should be held, which should handle the following topics, with assigned responsibilities;
Pre-existing conditions; to review the existing health and safety policies, training policies all staff and human resource policies. The team has to establish gaps in these policies and who will bridge these gaps, by when.
Management of public communication; i.e. Who is saying what? To who? Using what media? What method? the marketing manager would be best placed to handle public communication. A preliminary admission of the existence of the problem, and an assurance that the victims are being catered for, and that the company is doing everything within its power to avoid a repeat would be a good start. This should be done where the protagonists seem to seek the most audience, be it radio, TV, Twitter, print, etc.
Prevention of further accidents in the interim; it might be decided in the meeting that there is to be a temporary restriction for the public to picnic at the site, with proper access control and signage, as the situation is evaluated. Other activities might involve the maintenance team where it is established whether monitoring and maintenance is being done as directed, whether commissioning training of the equipment is being carried out, and whether training is being adequately documented.
Establishing the root cause of the accidents; the root cause could be negligence, improper commissioning, equipment that is not working properly, improper supervision etc. the team needs to identify who will properly investigate the root cause.
Establishing proper remediation to prevent future accidents; remediation should be convincing both to the internal and external publics. It should build confidence with the workers and the general public that the company takes the incidence seriously and is preparing to ensure there is no recurrence. The remediation plan is effectively the future proactive crisis management plan.
Manage the immediate plan and control the conversation
The team will have decided in the meeting what will be done by who or when. All public announcements should be done after being ratified by both the PR and the CEO to avoid contradictions. Staff should be given the rules of what they say when. If possible, the victims should be given an opportunity to give a feedback of how the company is handling their plight.
The PR manager should also field as many questions as possible from the public and give as many assurances as possible without going out of topic or running out of material. Prior knowledge is important here.
The current staff crisis should be diffused by creating proper staff management guidelines including performance indicators, training schedules and documentation, proper work etiquette, monitoring and verification schedules and management reviews to ensure that accidents can be prevented before they have to be managed.
The greater good brought to the table by the company through green energy can be brought to peoples current memory through more aggressive marketing without referring to the current crisis.
What not to do in the implementation of the plan
As mentioned above, the company already has several things going right in its narrative and therefore the following are the things that the PR Manager should avoid;
Do not use people who are not trained to handle public conversations; public conversations can be tricky. It is bad to say nothing at all but it is worse to say the wrong thing.
Do not run away from or delegate responsibility for the accident; the public is better learning what you will do to prevent recurrence than which manager did not do what.
Why Use Proactive Crisis Management Planning, And When?
A company that promotes proactive planning within it is capable of taking control of its current and future states. This can be achieved through optimization of resources to be used only when necessary and in the most efficient ways. Proactive planning also allows a company to monitor current operations and make adjustments in time to avoid future emergencies. Activities that might not be apparent to a reactive person are planned and executed in a timely manner so that negative occurrences are prevented.
It therefore is important to develop a proactive approach to public relations throughout the lifecycle of an organization.
When to Use Reactive Crisis Management and the Role of PR
This study is a classic example of a Public Relations Manager who has been forced to use reactive crisis management. This is because he has just joined a company and been hit with a crisis. The most probable reason is that there was no proactive plan, or effective procedures. The scrutiny of human resource policies is also reactive because the PR manager did not have time to check that such complaints cannot arise from the faulty human resource policies.
The work of the Public Relations manager is therefore to mitigate the current damage as much as possible, prepare management and staff for implementation of a proactive approach, create a proactive plan and coordinate staff, management and resources for its effective implementation.
Conclusion
Arising from this study, it is clear that Public Relations is better off using a proactive approach to manage potential crises, other than waiting for accidents and emergencies to happen, as these can quickly escalate to worse situations and force even more reactive responses that if not well checked can be more costly.
References
Coombs, W. T. (2014). Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding: Planning, Managing, and Responding . Sage Publications.
Regester, M., & Larkin, J. (2008). Risk issues and crisis management in public relations: A casebook of best practice . Kogan Page Publishers.
White, J., & Mazur, L. (1995). Strategic communications management: Making public relations work . Universities Press.
Smith, R. D. (2012). Strategic planning for public relations . Routledge.
