hk pandemic preparedness
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PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESSInitiating Your Plan: A Guide From Hill & Knowlton
The H1N1 Influenza A (swine flu) outbreak has served as yet another reminder to public and private sectors alike that there’s no substitute when it comes to pandemic preparedness. Effective crisis and business continuity planning is not a nice-to-have – it’s essential for any organization to function and respond properly and effectively.
PANIC VS. PANDEMIC
This is where H&K can help. Together with an international network of crisis management, public affairs and communication experts in offices in the region, Hill & Knowlton is well equipped to advise and support your organization in developing a response strategy to deal with pandemics should they arise.
The following guidelines are designed as a reminder for your business to dig up and dust off your existing pandemic prepared-ness plans with some easy-to-follow steps. At any stage, Hill & Knowlton can be called upon to help your business upgrade its readiness to address the pandemic threat.
In the event of a true pandemic, the most important thing you can focus on is the security of your business’s operations, starting with your employees. The world’s media will turn primarily to government and healthcare leaders for content, so your focus should be first and foremost on the well-being of your staff. Only with a healthy and safe workforce will your business be able to continue in some capacity, so in the first instance revisit your existing pandemic plans – both for business continuity and communication.
STEP 1 SCENARIO PLANNING AND REVISIONThis step is essential for determining what you’re going to be able to handle in the event that the current threat becomes a real pandemic. If you already have pandemic scenario plans, visit the WHO or your relevant government department websites to ensure that you’re working with the latest informa-tion. If you don’t already have a plan in place, it’s not too late. First identify the ways a pandemic can affect your business, and then determine what you need to do to either avoid those problems or minimize their impact. Here are some tips to get you started:
• Is the main threat to your business going to be the loss of your own staff, or perhaps the loss of a key supplier?
• What are your minimum staffing requirements to continue operating?
• Can your staff work remotely?
Once the key threats are identified, the next step is to develop a centralized pandemic response plan to ensure that your business can respond quickly and with the discipline required to minimize the threat. The plan should include:
• A Pandemic Scenario Response Map for each identified scenario, outlining definition of a crisis for that particular issue, as well as mes-saging and response strategies for managing media and other stakeholders more effectively
• Checklists for all the team members, system-atically outlining their roles and responsibilities
• Lists of external and internal audiences and their contact details
• Draft response material – statements, back-grounders, fact sheets, questions and answers, employee correspondence etc.
STEP 2PLAN TESTING: DESKTOP SIMULATIONTesting your plan will do two very important things: identify gaps in your plan and give your response team some practical experience in implementing it.
Desktop simulations provide the opportunity for your team to learn their drills in a step-through environment, which can then be stress-tested with a larger-scale simulation if required. Scenario inputs, such as telephone calls from government, the community, industry, employees and the media, and facsimiles of wire stories, news coverage and television news programs, are used to set the scene, present the problems and introduce complicating elements. Participants use the draft Pandemic Response Plan to respond to the situation in a systematic and structured way.
The simulation also gives the Pandemic Response Team a thorough appreciation for the need to better engage with a wide range of audiences – local authorities, school officials, environmentalists, politicians – as well as the local and international news media taking into account legal, political, economic and employee considerations.
STEP 3PANDEMIC COMMUNICATIONS TRAININGRegardless of how seasoned your spokespeople may be in front of the camera, most will never have dealt with an intensive crisis such as a pandemic. It’s therefore essential that your spokespeople are up to the task of dealing with highly emotional, very concerned stakeholders. Your spokespeople should be able to represent your business’s position to any stakeholders, be they staff, colleagues, government or a waiting media pack.
STEP 4PANDEMIC RESPONSE
Should a pandemic threat escalate to a significant level (identified by an upgrade to WHO Phase 5 or 6), you’ll need to implement your plans. At this time it is invaluable to have a skilled support team in place, and we’ll work with you to help your pandemic response team respond effectively to the situation. Our role would be to:
• Activate your Pandemic Response Team
• Provide strategic counsel to the team
• Prepare communication materials – speaking notes for internal staff communication, media releases, statements, Q&As, position papers, backgrounders, third-party testimony
• Undertake media liaison
• Monitor media coverage, identify emerging issues and counter misperceptions
• Identify third-party influencers to support your position
• Serve as liaison with government and special-interest groups
• Set up and staff information hotlines
• Support web-based communication
• Arrange media conferences, media tours, satellite feeds and teleconferences
• Develop employee communication materials
• Work with outside groups including legal, investigation and insurance firms as required
• Carry out post-crisis evaluation and action
DO • Minimize disruption – put measures in place to
ensure business continuity
• Remember good internal communication is vital
• Keep open lines of communication with all stakeholders
• Ensure a single point of contact for urgent information
• Update your crisis plans
• Test preparedness of procedures and personnel, especially pandemic response team
• Demonstrate responsibility
• Listen to experts, not rumor
• Utilize principles of risk communication – trust and credibility are key
• Ensure that all communications are calm and rational
• Communicate with clear, concise information
• Provide regular updates
• Create channels for your external and internal stakeholders to ask questions
• Get information translated into multiple languages and ensure that it is culturally appropriate
• Make sure spokespeople are trained to handle media
• Agree on key messages – when dealing with media enquiries, your messages need to be consistent across the board
• Remind all staff of your media policy and enforce it
DON’T• Panic
• Wait until your organization is affected
• Assume that your crisis plan is up to date
• Try to communicate when you have nothing to say
• Ignore questions from staff
• Always trust Twitter - having millions of people wrap up all their fears into 140 characters and blurt them out in the public might have some dangerous consequences, networked panic being one of them
• Rely on traditional modes of communication
• Put forward spokespeople who aren’t media trained
• Allow anyone to speak to media without agreeing on key messages beforehand
• Make assumptions – what you think is obvious might not be apparent to your stakeholders
GLOBALAnnaMaria DeSalva | Worldwide Director of HealthcareHill & Knowlton909 Third AvenueNew York, NY 10022 | United States+1 212 885 [email protected]
UNITED STATESRon Bottrell | Senior Counselor – Crisis Management & Food SafetyHill & Knowlton222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, Suite 275Chicago, IL 60654+1 312 475 [email protected] EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST, AFRICATim Luckett | Managing Director of Issues & Crisis Management, UK20, Soho SquareLondon WC1A 1PR | United Kingdom+ 44 (0) 207 413 [email protected] ASIA PACIFICRay Rudowski | Regional Director, Asia-Pacific Crisis Planning and Communications TrainingHill and Knowlton Asia Ltd36th Floor, PCCW Telecom TowerTaikoo Place979 King’s RoadQuarry Bay, Hong Kong SAR+ 852 2894 [email protected] LATIN AMERICAAntonio Tamayo | President and Managing Director, MexicoHill & Knowlton MexicoProl. Paseo de la ReformaNo. 490-1st. Fl.01210 Mexico, D.F. | Mexico+ 52 55 9177 [email protected] CANADACeleste Brown | Senior Vice President & National Practice Leader Hill and Knowlton Canada160 Bloor Street East, Suite 700Toronto, OntarioM4W 3P7 | Canada+1 416 413 [email protected]
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