Reputation & Responsibility: Crisis Management Within Comms

Written by Ella Desewu

The reputation and responsibility webinar held by the UK Black Comms Network on June 9th 2021 was a Q&A panel session regarding crisis management within communications.

 There were three panellists across a variety of sectors within the PR industry; travel, retail and education.

 The discussion was flowing as questions were being asked, different perspectives were great to listen to. It was clear that planning and preparation is key to smoothly dealing with a crisis situation and having pre-built trust within the organisation was a revisited point within the webinar. It is vital to run through a crisis communications document with teams so that everyone knows what to do in these situations.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way a crisis is planned for. The panel discussed the idea that it had exposed weaknesses within organisations and created an immediacy of needing a risk assessment unlike before, we have found out that crises have implications other than finance, for example, license to operate and reputational impacts.

 Overall, the webinar was interesting listening to the advice given during the session. It was helpful to understand how to manage crisis situations in specific contexts which the panellist’s spoke about from experience.

Speakers on the webinar were:

• Matt Brown - Director of news and external relations at TFL

• Veronica Patton-Cemm - Associate Director of Teneo

• Mammy Maguire - Head of Student Communications and Social Media at Manchester Metropolitan University