Crisis Communications: Taking Action & Preparing for the Future

Speaker B: Okay, let's wait for some people to join. Okay, people are starting to join now. Welcome everyone to this Contact Monkey webinar with Inner Strength Communications and Priya Bates. Just going to give people a few more minutes to join. Usually it takes a couple of minutes to join these Zoom Meetings, if you're not sick of them already. Um, but today we're going to be talking about types of communications. Priya, you have control of the screen currently.

Speaker A: Okay, I've got control now. I'm trying to see my— I think it takes a few minutes sometimes.

Speaker B: Yeah, technology.

Speaker A: Gotta love it.

Speaker B: There we go.

Speaker A: There we go. Okay.

Speaker B: Yes, so as I mentioned, today we'll be talking about crisis communication and specifically around the action that you can take now that will help you for the future when you do go back to the office. And just a few— if we can go to the next slide, Priya— just a few housekeeping first. We will have Q&As throughout this webinar, and towards the end we'll have dedicated time to answer any questions you may have. We will also be recording the session if you have to jump off early or have to join another meeting, and sending it over via email probably tomorrow afternoon, and it'll also be on our website as well. So, I'll leave it to you, Priya, now to work away.

Speaker A: Great. Well, it's really nice just to be here this morning to talk to you about, you know, crisis communication and what the role is of internal communication. I, you know, a little bit about Inner Strength Communication. We help organizations enable, engage, and empower their employees to successfully manage change and deliver business results, and we're always focused on the business. And really, you know, this has come from a place where we really want to position internal communication as an integral enabler of organizational success, and that means making sure you're successful as practitioners, HR practitioners, PR practitioners, to make sure that you're able to deliver. A little bit, oh, it's something's moving weird here, maybe too fast. I'm pressing too fast. Our values, and we always go back to our values in our organizations as we should through this crisis, we engage your employees, we communicate to connect, we build strength from the inside out, and we collaborate to deliver better.

Speaker B: Great.

Speaker A: And that's something that I'm hoping that you do as well in the— as a practitioner. So when I think of the IC role in crisis, the visual that came to mind was the stoplight, and how do we, you know, take those cues. Before a crisis, our role is to plan and prepare, and I've made very specifically, the colors are meaningful. The yellow is supposed to be slower. If you take the time when you have it, when you're not in the midst of a crisis, to plan and prepare, it makes all the difference for when you're in a crisis. During the crisis, your role is to keep people calm and keep them connected. And we'll go into this a little bit more. And that's— the green is about it's time to go. But the one thing And the thing that you should keep in mind is if you don't have that plan and preparation, what you're trying to do within the crisis is do your planning and preparation and you're reacting, and the last thing that does is make everybody calm. And it's something to keep that in mind because that preparation counts, and I know that some of you are in it, but it's something that I want you to keep in mind for the future because this is all about how do we improve the next time based on our learnings, and that's what brings us to after, you know, things have calmed down, are starting to come back to normal, our role is to research and recommend. And I make that red very purposefully. It's a little bit of, do we have the time to force ourselves to stop and reflect on what we've accomplished and what we think could improve? It's also a little bit of red because it's about the urgency of making sure you have that conversation, that courageous conversation at the right time. It's kind of like And there's a little bit of a time period where you have that conversation or you lose the momentum, the credibility, you lose that opportunity to have the conversation where there is a real understanding of why it's necessary. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that as well. So Katie, I'll let you take this. We have a little bit of an audience poll.

Speaker B: Yeah, one second, I'll just jump in here and launch the poll. One second, and I'll give everyone a few minutes to—

Speaker A: Yeah, so question, how many of you had a crisis plan in place?

Speaker B: Okay, I can see some responses trickling in.

Speaker A: Excellent.

Speaker B: A bit mixed so far. I'll just give everyone a few more seconds to answer the questions. Okay, I think we have the majority have answered, so I'm just going to display the results now. So a bit of a mixed bag here. Is this what you expected, Priya?

Speaker A: Can I see the results? What did— oh, there it is. I just saw it. So this is what I expected. So first of all, for those of you who don't have a plan or are in the kind of place, completely normal for organizations right now. It'd be interesting, what I should have done is asked also how many of those organizations have dedicated internal communication, and how many have people who aren't normally doing internal communication delivering this, a little bit of learning as they go, and I'm sure that would have an impact on whether you had a plan in place. So a lot of organizations don't have a plan in place, 25% as we saw, and the kind of, I'd be curious to find out what kind of means, but I put it there on purpose because my suspicion was that a lot of people figured we have something in place that kind of may mean that this situation is a bit different than something that we would have expected. So we think we'd gotten, you know, some of the regular scenarios, but now we're having to tweak that plan, which is totally normal because every situation is different. But I think it's really, first of all, I think it helps us to all know that if you had a plan in place, 2 thumbs up. I'm sure that how you're delivering that plan is completely different in terms of your mindset and your preparedness than, than those who don't have something in place. And, and that'll help with anxiety, not only your own anxiety in terms of delivering, but in that anxiety from the people you're communicating to. So I'm a big encourager of planning.

Speaker B: I'm—

Speaker A: did you give me control? Oh, there we go, okay. So, did I— okay. So, let's talk about preparing your planning. The elements of a crisis plan are pretty simple. We do— this is, you know, for some of you who have a plan in place, this will be a little bit of Communication 101. For others, it may be things that they haven't really considered, especially if they're new to being given the responsibility crisis and for communication during this one in particular. We need a good stakeholder analysis. Who are the people? And for those of you who've created intranets out there, or even internets, websites, one of the exercises we play is in personas, building personas. If you looked at your organization, what would the personas look like? And those personas and those stakeholders are separated based on their different needs. In some cases, it's, it's, you know, the difference between people who are working at home versus people who are in the office, people who are frontline versus those who work from home. There are differences in terms of an analysis of what the needs of executives and leadership need versus managers. versus individual contributors. What we— so we're going to take a look at our audience and really kind of put them into buckets, targeted buckets based on information needs. And, and I'll share with you, you know, show you where you can get templates to do that. But it's one of those exercises that is absolutely necessary whenever we do an audit. and whenever we deliver a plan. The second one is once we understand those stakeholders, what are the channels and vehicles you use to communicate with them? Really understanding what— how do we get in touch with the truck driver who is driving across the country and maybe crossing borders? How do we get in touch with people who are now working from home who normally weren't used to? Really thinking about what are the channels and vehicles today that we use to communicate to them. Roles and responsibilities. When we're doing crisis plans, whether I was at Hewlett-Packard or Compaq, or especially at Loblaws where I helped build the internal communication crisis plan, we never worked in a vacuum, and that's that collaboration piece that I talk about. We worked with HR, we worked with operations, we worked with leadership, we worked with labor relations if it was a labor crisis, with product development if there was issues there with products. So it's always a collaborative team, but what are the roles and responsibilities of the individuals on that team? Who manages operations? Who makes the final call? Who's the executive sponsor? We had, you know, kind of a structure to who did what and who would lead in what situation. For instance, when I was at Loblaw Companies, which is Canada's largest private sector employer, I would lead when it was a labor relations issue. I would lead if it was reorganizations and restructuring from a communication perspective, but if it was an external crisis, it would be PR or government relations that would take the lead. So we really think through, here's the situation, who takes the lead and when? What are the scenarios in the various scenarios that we have? And those scenarios would include things like natural disasters, those scenarios would include economic issues, they would include labor relations, and, you know, when I was at HP, we dealt with SARS and having the potential closing of a data center. So it would include things like the situation we're in now with the virus. So, so we really looked at these high-end scenarios and said, who would lead from a communications perspective and from an operational perspective? It was part of the business continuity plan. In that plan, once we understood roles and responsibilities, we also took a really good look at governance and approval processes, and when you're talking about communication, you're not just creating things and sending them out. There is an approval process. You need to know who's responsible, who are the experts in your organization. HR would lead on any HR items, and they'd have to have a last say in approval process. When does the president and CEO need to have a final okay, and when do they not want need to be involved? Who in operations is the expert on health and safety? Who in opera who is the expert on various areas so that you knew who needed to approve processes? Those are things you want to be thinking about ahead of time, and then key messages. There is such a thing as being proactive and reactive. So we had a set of messages that were the messages that we. values, our mission, our vision, our strategies, all those messages were in place and were the ones that we'd use on a regular basis. And then following on that, in the various situations that we, or scenarios, we may have a set of messages that we could rely on. Were those the messages we have to go through in a unique crisis? Absolutely not. Once you had those basic and foundational messages in place, you were able to move over and then say, now what's the specific message that I need to use? It at least kept you honest. And the one reason I love having that key messaging map available to us is that it— that we remind ourselves of what we said, we say to employees on a regular basis in terms of our values and our missions and all of those pieces. Because if we're saying something different, that may be a trust point, that if we're all of a sudden turning around and saying something else, and saying something very different than anything we've said before, then we need to explain why, and we need to help people create those connections. There are some templates on my website that can help, and these are available to anybody. Just go into innerstrengthcommunication.com/resources. There is a great stakeholder analysis template. There is an impact analysis template. That means that when you're in a situation You actually can say, ask yourself some really— or you ask your leader, what are the current challenges? What's changing? Why is it necessary? What starts, stops, and continues? Being able to explain that from an employee perspective or from a stakeholder perspective is really important. People need to know what stays the same and what they need to start doing and stop doing. It's a simple way to help you determine what your messaging needs to be during this crisis. You also have a communication briefing that you can use that helps you ask questions on a project basis or a change basis, and a planning template that you can use that has a lot of the elements I talked about that you just need to help fill in the blanks. So, so it at least gets you started and provides you with a tool. When we're in a— so if we've done that planning and We're not doing that, the majority of that planning, when a crisis hits. And that's, that's something that really makes a big difference in terms of us being able to, to be proactive and strategic and, and, and really own and control what's happening because— and, and lead the conversation with our leaders because we've done that planning in advance. Once we're— if you haven't Go to the templates anyway. Try to figure out what you can use now so that you can manage your messaging going forward. That's what I would recommend if you don't have a plan in place. But once you're in it, there's a role that you have to play when you have things that have been disrupted, and it doesn't matter if it's a reorg or a, you know, a virus, a healthcare issue, or a like environmental issue or disaster issue or an economic issue, our role is to help people keep calm and communicate. And the reason I say that, does that mean that we're completely— it's kind of the intersection between pure panic and calm. It doesn't mean that everybody's going to be calm, but it means that we're going to give them the information so that at least they have a connection to us, and they know what's going on and they trust that you're going to give them the facts as they're needed. So really think about that. One of my, one of the things I say all the time is that the rumours and the messages, the stories your employees tell in the void, in the absence of communication from your organization, are always 10 times worse than the truth. They always are, because what they're making up and the spinning and the anxiety that's developed, if they don't hear from you, they're making up something that's worse, and that's something I always tell the leaders, that if we tell them something, just what we know, they're going to trust that they're getting the real truth, the one source of the truth from us, and it's always going to be better than what they're making up. So part of our role is to provide the facts. Right now there's a lot of facts, and a lot of organizations that don't have internal communications, expertise and support, a lot of organizations who are kind of running by the seat of their pants, getting whomever knows how to write to send out messages, are doing a pretty decent job providing the facts. They're doing a pretty decent job because part of those facts are being drawn from what's happening in the government and the different levels of the government. They're getting those facts from the leaders who are making decisions about the business, what happens now, where do they sit, can they come into the office, should they stay home. you know, what do they need to focus on? So they're getting those facts, and I think companies are doing a pretty decent job. What we also need to talk about is feelings and acknowledging people where they are. This is not business as usual. So really helping people, you know, realize their feelings and put them in perspective. So we're starting to see from some organizations, especially led by HR, about, you know, the messages about mental health and wellness. I love the wellness messages that are coming out through your organizations to really, you know, because we're not connected to a lot of them, acknowledge their feelings. But when you are connecting them, there's also organizations out there who have people in warehouses and shipping and receiving, in front lines and healthcare. And what are the feelings that you're acknowledging to your workforce? That's just as important. So it doesn't matter what spectrum you're on, whether you work at home or you're in the front line fighting. We still need to acknowledge those feelings. And then what's the focus? What— this is not business as usual. So what is, what do we want our employees and workers and staff to be focused on? It may not be the same thing they were focused on 6 weeks ago. It— the strategies have probably changed. So to pretend it's business as usual if it really isn't, is, you know, hurt, has people feeling anxiety that they don't need. So really saying to, having your leaders understand, telling your leaders what's changed. It's back to that conversation. What stays the same? What stops? What starts? And once we know that, we can provide messaging about focus. What do we need to be focused on? We also need to create connection. And so we're starting to see this great, you know, information that's personal, and voice that's personal. We're seeing talk about our purpose, so organizations that are pivoting and switching what they're focused on and what they're delivering because they want to connect to what their purpose is. Restaurants who are feeding the homeless and hotels that are bringing in, allowing healthcare professionals to stay there. It's a really— there's an opportunity for this purpose message that is just incredible right now because Even when we're in this situation, we have this opportunity to create pride, and pride is a big area that is— that we can build whether we're going through good times or bad times. Think about what's happening with the grocery stores right now. These are people who we used to, you know, you used to look at, you know, cashiers, butchers, bakers, shippers, receivers are all of a sudden the heroes. That are trying to make sure we're all fed. And so the language they're using, I know with Loblaws and with Sobeys, you know, they're really talking about what, you know, the hero that those employees who are coming into work every day are, who they are and what they are delivering and why. Again, even in a really tough situation, there's this opportunity to create So it's something that you think about when you're building your messaging and talk, and also in terms of when your leaders are delivering this information. Some of the best examples out there, you know, Galen Weston is doing a great job with his video messages. I think that the head of Marriott, even though what he was talking about was something really horrible about closing down most of their hotels, delivered a heartfelt message. about why people should stick around and why and what it means to deliver what they deliver, and just some great examples that I've shared on my LinkedIn feed as well. I'm trying to move the— there we go. One of the studies that I look at all the time, and by the way, if anybody has questions, by all means ask during the presentation, I'm happy to answer them. So the Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual survey that I follow all the time, and they created a special edition and special survey specifically about our crisis here, about COVID And what they learned early days of the crisis is that what employees said was the most credible source is employer communications. They trust the information that's coming from their employer before they trust what's coming from the governments, and especially where there is disconnects and inconsistencies in some countries, that dependence and reliance on the information coming from their employers has gone up. The employers are expected to update information regularly, with 63% of employees expecting daily updates, and 20% expecting updates several times a day. And there is an opportunity to really think about what updates are they receiving from the organization at large, what updates are they receiving from their departments or their regions, and what updates are they receiving from their managers. So there may be a way to make sure there's not too much noise, because we don't want a lot of noise. What we want to do is have a coordinated effort where employees are hearing from you on right— on a regular basis in a way that's easy for them to digest. Great. And that 78% of respondents expect businesses to act to protect employees in the local community, and that's that values lens I was talking about. Your values are the lens through which your employees are paying attention to the communication and your actions, and it's something that you need to keep in mind, and that's going to help build trust or break trust. You have to decide which way it's going to be, and especially in this day right now, the actions and the words, the way you communicate, both through actions and words are going to matter. The other thing to keep in mind is I've loved that a lot of, a lot of people out there are talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And, you know, right now people aren't thinking about self-actualization and esteem. They're not worried about the next promotion. They're not worried about, you know, bettering themselves that much. What they're really focused on is, am I going to get a paycheck? Do I have what I need? Am I safe? Those 2 are absolutely important, and then what we're seeing is there's an opportunity for really focusing on belonging and love, especially when you've got, whether it's employees who are together delivering as a team to help us through this situation, or teams that have been split apart who aren't used to being together, we're starting to see this really great you know, employers who are creating connection, whether they're thinking about how do we get together just to have that water cooler conversation or that coffee chat, you know, and building that into their day so that they can create connection that's not just about what do I need to deliver. And I think there's an opportunity there. So here's some templates for you. There is a manager fact sheet. One of the things that every single time we do an audit and we work with organizations, the manager fact sheet becomes an integral tool. Reorgs, any changes we're communicating, we want to make sure that what we're driving is consistency. So if we've got a message that needs to go out, how do we make sure that the managers have all the information they need? And that— there's an example here. It gives them the background, the objectives, the timelines, and who's impacted, key messages, but also Q&A so that they can answer, so that the manager becomes the first line of support, and then somebody to contact if they don't have all the answers. And just that little bit of, as things change, being able to provide your manager with a fact sheet is, is so important. It becomes a tool they really rely on. In every organization I've worked with, they've continued to use the manager fact sheets, and any of the organizations I consult with, it's an important tool that they use through all changes, and when you are introducing those things regularly, it just becomes rote. They know what they're receiving, they know, they trust they're going to get the information, and at the end of the day, what the employees are hearing is a consistent set of messages that aren't the manager making it up. Again, what they make up is 10 times worse than reality. There is a communication planning, so I showed you the briefing template, there's a planning template you can use. Very high level. Try to keep my templates really easy and not complicated. There is a communication structure for those who haven't been trained in communication. How do you structure messages? And what are the— I have 5 Cs of effective writing, some tips and tricks as well on editing. So if you haven't been doing communication before, that'll give you some support. Your final, when we're starting to get through this crisis, there is going to be a little bit of recovery, and that's going to be a little bit complicated in this stage, so that, you know, when you start having those tools like the stakeholder analysis and those personas that you've built, when you then take a look at how we're going to go through the recovery, you're going to be, each of those groups are going to be different in terms, there may be different, or you may recreate your stakeholders. It may be there's a certain group that are starting to go back to business as usual. And others are not, and using those to create the recovery program is going to be really important. But once we're done, whether you had a plan in place or not at the beginning of this crisis, I'm hoping you're going to take a look and take the time to research and recommend, and that's really about that reflection. So when we're researching, what we're trying to capture is, I love this, outputs, outtakes, and outcomes, and I won't take credit for it, is a great researcher and professor and communication professional in the States named Sean Williams. He refers to the measurements and the research in these 3 buckets. Output is the stuff you do. It's the messages you write, it's the stories you create, it's the plans you created, it's the stuff. So think about outputs as I delivered this thing on time and on budget. I delivered it by this date. So when you're collecting outputs, that's what an output is. It's what you did as a communication professional, HR professional. Outtakes is the result of that output. So think of that as the clicks, the people who opened your message. If you have Contact Monkey, you're able to track that, right? If you— or talk to your IT team. For the Google Analytics on your website, the outtakes are how many people read the story, how many people clicked through, how many people opened the email. So those are the outtakes. So you sent something out, you provided communication. How many people attended the town hall? How many people attended the team meetings? Those are the outtakes of the output that you've created. The outcome is the gold. It's what happened as a result. So these are the actions, these are the behaviors, these are the feelings, these are the understanding. And the outcomes you're going to capture from, you know, the, you know, how many people, if you had a meeting where you asked them to do this specific thing, did they deliver on it? Can you measure that? If your outcome was to limit disruption, What were the impacts on finances, or limit disruption by a certain percentage was considered success. Did we meet the company's goals? Did we open these stores? Did we— did people click through and sign up for the benefits? All— what are those outcomes from a business perspective when we ask a leader, what does success look like? They're not going to tell you success looks like this many clicks on your message. None of them will tell you that. They'll say success looks like us getting everybody back smoothly. Success looks like the retention rates or attrition rates that they're going for go up, the attrition goes down versus up after people come back, right? So really think of what are the outcomes of the outputs that you sent out? What was the intention of the messages and the programs and the communication you did, and what did people do? do as a result. So you're going to capture that, and then the recommendations are what you actually ask for. Because this is what I say to a lot of communication professionals, is if you did not— if you don't take the opportunity to ask for what you need now and you don't have the courage to do that, you never will. And then you're just going to have to accept where you are and And then start all over again the next time. But there is a moment here where you could— you actually can say, here's what we delivered, and here's what we did really well, and here's what we could do better next time. And those fall into 3 categories for me, and they often do, whether any change project. In terms of people, did we have the right resources? Did we have the right people? Did we have the right governance? Did we have the right teams? Who was missing? Who was there who did an amazing job and delivered beautifully? Who was missing that we wish was at the table talking to us? So who are the people that we'd recommend? I want more access to HR, like internal communications and HR should be working hand in hand. I need— I wanted more access and knowledge of what was happening from an operational perspective, so next time I'd love to have somebody at the table who is talking about those things so we can understand the business. Process is another piece. It's going back to those pieces I talked about. It's what are the process, what are the processes that worked, what really worked well in terms of governance approval processes, and what were the pain points, what didn't work so well, and what would we recommend for next time. So think about that process. What would we do better next time? Who would we put in place? The last piece is platforms. This is the time that all of a sudden we're seeing this, you know, unprecedented— we've heard unprecedented a million times— unprecedented adoption of technology. I just heard from a client the other day that they actually implemented— they've been putting off their Microsoft 365 implementation for years and then had planned to have a long runway to launch it next year. And they got it up and running in 2 weeks, right? Like, this is— all of a sudden there is adoption of technologies, seats that are being purchased. Anybody who had platforms in place before who had the ability to measure and use are really happy they did because they're seeing their usage and their mobile downloads and going in and learning Microsoft Teams and learning about Zoom. go through the roof. So there— so, so what do we have that is really working? Because then you're going to justify keeping those technologies and renewing those licenses because you want to be talking about what are the platforms you wish you had. What, what weren't you able to do because you don't have the technology that would have helped you connect to non-desk employees, measure, you know, the, the power of your emails? Yes, I know I sent all these emails, but it would have been great to understand who actually opened them and what messages resonated and who actually clicked through. You know, I would have loved that data because that would have helped us decide what we needed to send out and what we didn't next time. So think about those, those options.

Speaker B: And just on that, Priya, at Contact Monkey, because of everything that's been going on, we've also recognized that people want to know more than just the opens and clicks. but the actual read time. So we've kind of pushed that out in the last week after kind of everything that's been happening. So now you can see, okay, great, people opened it and they clicked it, but did they actually read it? And kind of look more into those engagement metrics as well.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's the one thing that gets me very excited about the communication technologies that are out there right now. And the reason we partner with a lot of the technology platform companies is to understand what they do, because it gives us the metrics to explain what works and what doesn't and helps us have a more strategic conversation than we would just talking about what the stuff we sent out, right? We're really trying to change that conversation and that the metrics, the data, the measurement gives you power. And those platforms also give you the ability to poll and pulse people, help, you know, do you understand that message?

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: You know, get the— and then we're seeing a lot of companies go out there who do have the platforms in place be able to send a quick poll. Or a quick pulse out there to understand where people are and if anything, any sentiment has changed. And that gives you, again, information that you could bring to an executive team that they don't have access to. And all of a sudden, your value, because you provide that point of view, goes up. It always does. So a few templates that I've just built recently, a deliverable template. How many— I'd be curious about how many of you are actually capturing everything, even those who are running like mad. And I know you are. I know you're working ridiculous hours. But are you capturing everything that you're delivering, whether you had a plan or not, at least saying, here's the messages? Because when you look back at it, you may be— you may look at it and say, we communicated too much and created noise, or we didn't do enough. And that's why you want to capture everything you're doing right now. As you go through it. So do that, and there's 3 different, you know, we're going to have some information on what did we do before, and this is a template that can be used for any change initiative. What happened before to get people ready? Think about, you know, get people ready for home, things like that. What did you have to communicate before? What did you have to communicate during the changes? So while they're at home, while they're going through changes, and then what are you going to have to communicate afterwards from a recovery perspective? So capture all of that information and it showcases the role that you played. And that's an important— and being able to showcase that to a leader, you know, even as an additional, I always put it in the back. If you want more details, here it is. But then I give them a debrief template. And the debrief is exactly what I talked about. What's the project you're working on? And it could be a project, it could be a change, it could be a crisis. When did it start and when did it end? we can consider it complete, what were our objectives so that we could say we were being strategic, and then what worked, what didn't, and what would we recommend. And if you use that to manage your conversation and share with people, it really changes the conversation. What I, what I can say to you is when we're trying to get communication professionals to really change how they communicate with their leaders. We shouldn't be talking about the stuff. That again is, it's the back, it's acknowledging that we did a lot of stuff, but the why and our thinking is what's really important, and the outcomes, and this is really about relationships, it's about trust, it's about engagement, it's about productivity when you're trying to keep the lights on in an organization, it's about words and actions, It's about reputation, and we're going to see reputation results very soon, I think, come out of this crisis, because there's not a person I know that is working at home and is worried if they aren't getting communication from their employees who aren't also simultaneously working on their resumes. We're going to have major attrition issues and retention issues because of how organizations handled their communication during this crisis. Same messages, same messages. It's not about the what, because everybody's in the same situation, but how they communicate it is going to determine whether your retention goes up or down. I would, you know, pay attention to that as we go in the next 6 months, but we will see a real impact. I suspect we will. And this is also about sustainability. How do we actually sustain the changes that we need to? Because it's not going to be— people talk about the new normal. What's different and how do we get people used to that? How do we tell people who we used to say we don't trust you to work at home and we can't make it happen that we're now asking them to come back in the office? Really ask yourself the questions, and it's not, again, just the facts, but it's the why. Why are we making the decisions? How do we provide the information to help them? So, you know, I like this, the SEIU is a union, but I think that there is a really different feel and value right now, and I'm hoping part of that stays, that it was the frontline workers and the, you know, customer-facing workers that are being seen as very, very valuable right now. People are paying attention to To what people will pay attention to over the next year is bonuses that are paid out despite changes. Do they feel that the leaders went through this with us, or did they put us out in order to just drive the business? The how, again, is going to be really important, how you make sure, and there's an opportunity to make sure that those frontline staff feel the value that they've been asking for and believe in what they're delivering. So I'm going to open up for questions, but one of the things I did want to mention is we're launching— I'm partnering with Audacity, who's Jason Anthoine in the US from Atlanta, Georgia, and we're working on a few workshops and boot camps. One is going to be The Road to Recovery: Communicating What's Next, so it's taking you through how to think about how you communicate coming back into recovery so that you can plan it. There's going— what we've realized through a lot of the groups that we've been involved in, we as experts were asked to contribute to conversations with these technology providers, with their customers, and a lot of those customers are saying to us, we never got any basic training on internal communication, we're just delivering it by the seat of our pants. So we want to introduce an internal communications basics course, and we're also going to be launching a Courageous Conversations program so that people can understand, can kind of understand how they have the conversations and what's the advice that we give them in order to drive those conversations after. I've also launched some mentoring sessions. I know that, you know, I know at the same time that communications and HR practitioners are working 16-hour days and afraid to ask for more budget, it's hard to hire consultants, but perhaps there's a way that we can help mentor you through it, so it becomes a cost-effective play where you're getting our advice without having to pay the project cost for us running everything. So we could help you through those recovery sessions, we can work with your team, we can mentor you one-on-one on the conversations and help you build the case for investment and also help build your inner strength as well. So it's something to think about. Do we have any questions? That gives us about 15 minutes for questions, Katie.

Speaker B: Just checking now. I haven't seen any come in, so you can either use the Q&A box, I just see one now, or the chat. We're monitoring both. So we have a question here.

Speaker A: What do you think the biggest challenge will be for employees and employers when the time comes to go back I think the biggest, again, I think the biggest challenge is, is the difference between now and then, if you will. It's answering the questions and explaining why about the new reality, right? So if you've decided that we need everybody to come back into the office, when some people have enjoyed being at home, we need to just answer that, ask the why, answer the why. Why do we think it's really important? Why do we think— it may be completely different. It may be that we're now, now we've got an executive that is completely open to work from home. So then we have to introduce all those new programs. So there's a lot of new, what's new that's coming that wasn't what was before. It's not returning to what we did before. It's really about saying, What are the decisions we're making going forward? Now, how do we communicate it so people understand why we've made the decisions? There's going to be a lot of tough reorganization conversations, right? So, you know, I've communicated a million reorgs in my career, 25 years in the industry, and I think that there's a lot of restructuring and reorganizations that we're going to have to deal with, and I think the biggest challenge is going to also be about retention. There's going to be a lot of movement. So we were worried, employees were worried, employers were starting to get ready for issues with retention because of demographic changes, because of changes in technology. There's— so the retention was something that they were planning for 10 years out when the new generations start coming into the workforce. I think that the retention now is going to be a big issue for now. So as people get back, as they decide how they've been treated through these changes, they are going to decide whether they stay or they go. I think that's going to be, and I say this to executives all the time, your best workers go first.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: They do. That's natural because they're most marketable. Those who are really great at what they do, go first. So you need to, you either need to have a strategy to retain that talent, your high potentials, or really be doing all the right things so that they're really proud of the organization, so when they come back, they're actually going to see the opposite. I guarantee a Loblaws, having gone through this experience, is going to have an increase in retention rates, and they have really good retention rates to begin with. You know, there's going to be organizations that are going to really hurt, and that's a combination of things. It'll be, you know, people who are in their 50s deciding to retire early. So I think that there, all of a sudden, because retention is going to be a challenge, we're going to see an increase in the conversation about engagement.

Speaker B: And exactly because we're having a lot of time for self-reflection now.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: We're trying to figure out, okay, what do we really want to do? With work, with our career, with our life, everything. So I think that's a factor as well.

Speaker A: Exactly, and people are determining whether they're still loyal, you know, and that's depending on how the company's treated them through these changes. And when you're only communicating the facts versus the feelings, you know, and the focus, then people are going to just focus on the facts themselves and make the decisions based on their own personal facts.

Speaker B: Okay, I see one more question has come in. In your experience, Priya, what's the most common thing that internal communicators forget when crafting a crisis communication plan?

Speaker A: Forget to plan. I think they— I think the biggest thing is sometimes they're in their own, like they're focused on their own piece. So, so just like we have silos in an organization, we've got silos in terms of how we're delivering our results, and, and it's really about the relationships that you build now. If you have access to leaders, if you have access to HR, if you're having conversations with HR and internal communication operations are working hand in hand through this crisis when they haven't been doing that before, those relationships matter. So when you've created messaging, when you've created a plan, create those relationships and have people review the stuff, and really, and then think about how do we maintain the relationships afterwards. So internal communications forget to measure at the end. It's part of that debrief process that I'm talking about. They kind of move on to the next thing. They move on to recovery, they just kind of— again continue running by the seat of their pants, but taking the time to measure and have those conversations will make a big difference.

Speaker B: Okay, perfect. I think that's all the questions we have. If anyone else has any last-minute questions, please feel free to just pop it in the chat.

Speaker A: Oh, there's something just came in.

Speaker B: Coming in. What suggestions you have for the employer who worries people are not working as And the employee who worries that they will be laid off because of the tough time we're in.

Speaker A: So here's— when I worked for— I spent 12 years working for the technology industry, and I often had managers who were working, who were not in the same city as I was. I have— and one of the things we learned at HP which I've taken with me when I've led teams. I've managed lots of teams that are remote, and now my Inner Strength team is all remote as well, is that I focus on management by objective. So we talk about that a lot. So what do we want people to deliver, and have they delivered? And spend less time focusing on what they're doing in order to deliver. So you, what you're measuring is Did they complete what they, they needed to complete? And stop worrying about the rest. It's when you have the conversations, and we train managers to do that, when you have the conversations afterwards, stop worrying about the why. There are some people who are going to be able to deliver what they were expected to deliver in an hour. Others are going to take a week to do it.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: But during, you know, whether this is in the crisis or whether you're just managing remote teams, are they getting done what they were supposed to get done? If we focus there, then we can measure success or failure against that objective, and that's what I would encourage employers to be talking about. And to the employee who worries whether they're going to be laid off, I think it's keeping the lines of communication open and maybe addressing it. I know this is what you're concerned about, but we don't have the answers right now because we need to understand the impact on the business, and that's okay to say. It's okay to say that, you know, we're We're assessing where this, we're doing everything we can to sustain the business. The decisions and the actions we're taking now is for maintenance and sustainability. When I worked with Compaq, I was on the integration team for the HP Compaq merger. I've communicated many reorgs and mergers and acquisitions, and the truth is the majority of people do stay. Right? I've, even in some of those tough situations, we had 10%, 20%. I've never had 20%. It was usually 10% of the workforce that, that had to be let go. You have more people have the chance of staying than going. So we, when we knew it from a merger and acquisition perspective, we had those numbers, we'd say, you know what, you have 90% of the employees are staying. People focus on the negatives. I worked with a client in Western Canada recently, and all they kept talking about was the 600 people who were being let go. Well, what they didn't realize was that 600 was 5% of the workforce, so there's 95% who are staying.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: And it's really about saying, you know what, are we focusing, because we're so negative, because we're so worried about the negative impacts, we almost spend too much time focusing on that versus focusing on what the organization is doing to maintain and sustain the organization and keep as many people there as possible. And with every executive I've ever worked with, nobody's sitting there saying, get— nobody gets joy out of making those tough decisions. So that authentic conversation, acknowledging that things are hard, acknowledging that we're reviewing our results, acknowledging that we're doing our best to keep as many people here and employed as possible, And as soon as we have decisions and results, we'll tell you. We'll give you the information as soon as we can. Those are conversations that we— it's not about campaigns, it's about conversations, and those are the conversations we need to have.

Speaker B: Exactly. It's all about honesty and transparency.

Speaker A: Transparency, because again, the messages and the things they think are going to happen Are going are always worse than the reality. They always are. You know, in this case, you know, I don't know with with the smaller organizations that what I worry about are the SMBs, the small medium businesses, the restaurants, you know, and and we it's going to be hard for that some of those who are going to have to shut down. But I'm also confident there's going to be somebody new who's now living their dream and saying now. I'm going to start and I'm going to open up a new restaurant, and we'll eventually have that happen as well. There will be some balance in the conversations and the results.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So I think that's all the questions for now. If anyone has any last-minute ones, and then we just have a few final finishing slides just with contact information. I think you still—

Speaker A: Great, that was great, the timing is perfect.

Speaker B: I think you have control. Here we go. So Priya, do you want to talk through this and kind of then we'll go to your contact details?

Speaker A: I just have to close this. Oh, you know, it was just when we train people, we think about what an internal communication professional does in terms of our 5 I's. We find that a lot of communication professionals are working, or HR professionals or PR professionals, are working in the implement space. But that's the foundational. It's the basics of what you do. But really, we train on how do you interact, build relationships, how do you integrate and connect the dots with your information, how do you influence yourself, and how do you ultimately impact the business. So a lot of our tools are built around the 5 I's, and ultimately it's about making sure that you as a practitioner have all the tools you need in order to deliver. So, so we really want to make sure we're not launching and leave initiatives. And my success as, when I'm consulting with organizations, is I'm really excited when you don't need me anymore. And a lot of companies, you know, and it was something when I was inside organizations was hard, that you'd see consultants coming in with flavor-of-the-month programs, but you also got consultants who came in who were trying to create incredible dependencies. We need to prove to you that we're the only ones who can deliver, and they'll do it without Collaborating with inside, with the people inside the organizations. We work very differently. We want to build strength, make sure you have the right people, the right processes, the right platforms, and then our success is when we can walk away. So think of that. We work from the inside out. We don't launch and leave. We really try to keep it simple and we help you deliver results. So it'd be great to work with you.

Speaker B: And here's Priya's details if you'd like to get in contact. after the webinar, and I will be sharing the recording as well via email to anyone who's watching now or registered and couldn't make it. And then just in terms of Contact Monkey, we also acknowledge that kind of it's trying times, as everyone is saying at the minute, and kind of we feel that that's come up a lot, that time is of the essence when we're talking to a lot of our clients and customers. So that's why we want to offer to anyone who's not currently tracking their internal communications emails or gathering feedback from their emails. We're offering help on kind of the design side because we know this is quite a timely process. Same-day setup and just free access to our tool while you need it and kind of while you need to understand the metrics and the engagement of what's happening as we go through this pandemic that's going on. So here's my details if you want to reach out, or you can just go on to our website either. And we also do— there's just a look at kind of the different metrics that you can see from our software. And similar to Priya, we do have a crisis communication plan template up on our website as well. So lots of free templates and actionable items from this webinar for you guys to use and kind of to put into action proactively, hopefully not retroactively, for the next time. So I think That's everything. Thanks for joining everyone, and thanks, Priya, for this great information. And we'll see you next time. Bye.

Speaker A: Bye, everybody.