There was a crisis in our Department, Our machines were failing to print the drivers license Cards. I asked my superviser if i can make an appointment with different media outlet for interviews ,so that we can inform people about this.She then went to confirm with the Head of IT if we can set appointments.Since he was the one who can explain the problem better.He told us to wait for a day since they are still working on it,guess what?a day turned to a week .Newspapers wrote about it,and radio stations called the office and ask about it.The department failed to communicate with the public about machines failing to print the drivers license Cards until media call us to confirm about it.
After this crisis , i learned that it is always advisable to communicate before a media call. i strongly agree with Babble On Communications President Susan McLennan ,when she says
''Be proactive. Break bad news yourself so you can ensure your side of the story is heard. Waiting for someone else to tell it means you will only be responding and not able to contextualize the issue in the most helpful way. Reach out to the media and make your website a destination by updating it with the information the media and the public want, including the bad news.''
it was very important for us ,as an organization to break the news first ,to ensure that people get the right side of the story and get all the facts,not just the negatives that came along.Head of IT wanted us to give him time first to fix the system while speed of response is more important than getting everything right.
6 comments:
i have to agree with you on this one. it is very important that the organisation keeps on updating their websites and the social media pages if they have, to inform the customers that certain services will not be available because of this and this. Radio announcements will also do to inform the public of any sudden changes or any inconveniences in the organisation.
This situation sounds scary but I think it is always good to prepare a Crisis Management plan as early as possible - even before the 'ice' starting to melt. I do agree with what McLennan said.
What I might do is to keep track with the management or supervisor regarding to this issue, and give some suggestions and gentle reminders in order to make sure the printer problems will be fixed very soon before anything goes wrong.
I also second Bakang on his point that it is essential to keep your customers updated on all the services that affect them. Having in place a crisis management plan would have helped your organisation or department be in control. That way you would easily be able to curb being put on the spotlight by the media as you say they did and cleansing the slate as soon as possible making sure that minimal damage is done. Building reputation takes ages yet destroying it is a matter of seconds.
Though to some extend I may agree with you that the IT officer was wrong by delaying the public briefing process, It backfires back to the reputation of your office as it is responsible for the dissemination of vital information as well as addressing the media keeping them informed at all times.
By the way, one other crucial point to note with regard to crisis management is that in order to succeed, it is advisable that one does not become defensive but rather takes a stand of publishing the facts as they are and apologising for inconvenience caused.
Public relations at our office is still very new.It started in 2008. Before that every PR related issues were done at the Ministry of Transport and Communication.I guess you all will be shocked if i tell you that the Department does not have its own website. We are still using the Ministry's website .I also explained to them the importance of social media,but the challenge i was that the internet at our Department is very slow,we hardly axcess internet ,unless one come early in the morning or knock off very late.
At our office we pay for every media release that we send to media houses for publication.So to send a media release will take like two days since you have to go and ask for approval from Supplies Office.Radio interviews and TV interviews are always the way out for us.Again the challenging thing is that, Leaders at my Department are affair of media.My supervisor is even thinking of appointing a media training for them.
The other challenge is that Management at our Department they don't understand the role of public relations,may be its because PR is still very new.During Crisis they will try and solve things on their own,they will only come to PR when they want things to be published .
hi Florance, i agree with you, thats true, but you will realize that as organizations and companies we think that some things are invisible to the media even though we know that we are living in a fast paced world, where nothing can be a secrect. Each and every business, company or organization always have been and always will be in a highly visible position to the media, they do all their best to know about the everything that is hapenning within different organizations. we also encountered the same problem at BPC (Botswana Power Corporation), the billing crisis where the corporation had to estimate electricity bills due to the installation of new smart meters, even though customers were told before about teh whole process, some people started complaining about being over charged, we just took it easy as we know they have been told before that if they were over charged after the installation they will be given back their money. It became a crisis as the media was now involved and the whole issue was growing too out of hand. but at the end of the crisis we realized that we could have made things easier by alerting the media that we are handling the situation. Therefore i would say media should be the first people to know about what is happening because they can ruin your reputation within a second. Hope your organization managed to handle the crisis as for us we did not give up, it was never too late for us to calm the media and angry public.
This is a fantastic blog post and example of where an organisation that deals with the public and supplies an important service is unable to do so, doesn't tell anyone and then the media finds out and blows the story.
It would have been much more beneficial if the organisation as you proposed told the media first. An example only today that we can relate this to is Westpac who had an outage of all their electronic banking services (ATM, EFTPOS and online banking). Through their website, twitter and also making media announcements which were then in news bulletins around the country they advised that services were unavailable. They also updated all channels when they found the problem was with their data centre provider and the servers overheating due to a aircon fault. Throughout the day they have been updating the situation and this has meant that people are fully aware.
Communication technologies, especially networks such as Twitter are very powerful as they enlighten people with information instantly and are able to provide an instant communication method.
Even organisations such as the Police throughout Australia use Twitter for emergency updates. In Queensland this was used for flood evacuation warnings and in Western Australia this has been used for missing persons and abductions.
It is important for the power of these technologies to be harnessed and used in our public relations environments, especially when you have a crisis or are dealing with the public.
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