
By: Will Herman, Manufacturing Team Lead
Restructuring is one of the oldest cards in the deck for businesses and organisations tackling a host of sometimes complex challenges, from mergers and acquisitions to market changes or simply, poor performance. And in times of crisis, whether the drivers are internal or external and when cutting costs is essential, it is a proven means of maintaining profitability.
But it is also proven to be a high risk and disruptive process. Unintended consequences can be more damaging than any benefit gained and in too many cases, the process is initiated without properly identifying the reason for change. Cutting departmental budgets is a tactic, not a strategy and there is no hiding from the fact that the damage to an organisation’s culture, team morale and individual performance at all levels can fatally undermine the objective.
In-house and agency communications and PR teams have always wrestled with the challenge of proving ROI. And as anyone who has worked in the field for any length of time will know well, when the axe falls, the first heads to fall will often be theirs. But managing the impact on people is fundamental to the success of any change programme, and neglecting communications will do nothing at all for stakeholders, customers or the media.
Similarly, businesses will find little sympathy in any quarter, if they are not adequately prepared when a crisis hits, be it a factory fire, product recall or financial scandal. A key part of dealing with any such situation is having a crisis communications plan in place. And it follows that without the people in place who have the expertise to deliver it, a business is severely undermining its ability to weather the storm.
When a crisis hits, every party with a vested interest will want as much information as possible, particularly when it’s a matter of public health and safety. You don’t have to look back very far to find evidence of that. A well planned, practiced and proactive as well as honest approach is the best way to avoid a PR catastrophe.
For some businesses, there is often a real temptation to simply hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. It will be old news soon enough. But the fact is that people may not remember everything you said, or even everything you did, but we all remember how we are made to feel. Poor communication and any perceived lack of transparency will only lead in one direction. In contrast, an open and honest approach with stakeholders and engaging with the media allows a business to manage information in the public domain and influence the way it is reported. Which brings us back to the importance of internal communications. The value of even the best external communications plan can be for nothing if employees or suppliers take to social media or the press, with inaccurate information.
At the end of the day, when crisis hits, or change programmes are initiated, the communications plan and the team who deliver it are fundamental to the long-term health of any organisation. And when the dust settles, there will still be plenty of comms work to do. Post event communication is vital to ensure values are embedded, to reassure suppliers, maintain team morale and retain customers’ confidence and loyalty.
As markets and business models continue to evolve at pace, good comms teams are no less important than strong leadership and effective change management. Without these, cutting budgets is a merely a reductive tactic that will weaken the business.