Tag Archive for: crisiscommunication

Like a boss…….?

Sometimes you feel like a boss lady. And sometimes you’re working in bare feet and drowning in sticky notes.

Anyone else relate?

My mum bought me the ‘Boss Lady’ desk thingy because it was pink, and because it said words she thought were both funny and encapsulated me. Another side says ‘yeah, nah’ ?

I love working across different projects. In my everyday life I work as an integral part of the ResilientCo team, as well as with my own clients in crisis communications and public relations.

The past few weeks have been a balance of strategic planning and crisis support.

Shifting between the two requires a different mindset and focus but working on one prepares you for the other.

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The risk of risk communication

Government and public health officials are coming up against a universal truth in risk communications and awareness raising – people will make their own determinations about risk using a range of information, feelings, rationalisation and historic knowledge. 

They’ll check in with others, assess what suits them based on convenience, perceived threat and circumstances, and act accordingly. 

The processes for decision making are not straight forward, based in life biases and sometimes – often – emotions.  

Every Australian in lockdown under COVID19 is weighing up what they believe, with their own reality and experience.  Some disagree with the entire concept, we know that. Others are tired. Some don’t think it will happen to them. 

This happens in all emergencies, in fire, in flood and storms. It’s happening in COVID19. In many cases with COVID19, deprivation (knowledge, belief, choice or human contact) is driving our response to the risk. 

Media is currently talking about not just the ‘big events’ potentially leading to COVID19 spread, but the everyday small choices people are making. 

How are you going being derived of human contact, family, ‘normal life’, playgrounds? How is your mental health or ability to pay bills going? 

It’s not just the assessment of risk that drives being able to do what you know is right or required. But the differing responses between states – and countries – to such a public health emergency doesn’t help settle the response. 

And where the response is compromised, risk communication struggles. 

It’s hard enough for communication experts – who have to use behavioural understanding plus societal understanding plus reasoning plus myth busting for communities – to get cut through.

As humans we’ll always (often) look for loopholes until we experience the reality.  It’s a reality that in reality, none of us want. 

It’s not just epidemiologists who are looking at how NSW, Victoria, other Australian states, New Zealand and other countries tackle the response to COVID19. 

Behaviouralists and communication specialists are eyeing this off just as much, wincing or cheering. 

It’s the world’s biggest and most frightening case study. 

Reference: https://lnkd.in/gpg2Bjdx

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Talking in the name of…..

Wow I’ve had a good time talking to people lately.  In the name of work I mean ?

For the past few months, I’ve been focusing on writing content for a range of clients based on interviews – both employees and product supporters. 

Harking back to my journalist days, I’ve had a ball planning out the overarching strategic approach and questions, getting to know the ‘subjects’, ahem, people, and writing bang on content for clients with a human edge. 

The power of words. And natural human stories. My favourite. 

Sound like something you need? Feel free to have a chat. 

Shoot me an email or give me a call ? ☎️ 

www.nataliestaaks.com.au 

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Examples of good and bad COVID19 comms – discuss

I had a doozy of a topic to facilitate at the IABC  #converge21 communications conference last night – ‘what has your government done well or badly in covid communications?’ 

Starting with ‘the good’ there was a crazy silence.

For the ‘bad’, there were plenty of examples.

It’s perhaps not so surprising when considering a worldwide, fast moving, frightening pandemic with a large impact. 

Some of the international participants were still living it. Political infighting and media manipulation seem universal. It can also be difficult to separate out the action of government from the communication of the action by communicators. 

When I was preparing, I was looking for non-Australian examples. This link collects a number of international marketing and public health campaigns, not all government. 

Some interesting examples – from an American-based ‘You’re freaking us out, wear a mask’ to Finland using teddy bears to demonstrate social distancing on buses before donating them, to Thailand’s ‘Dear Crisis’, resilience building campaign. 

Thanks to the participants at my virtual table for contributing to the discussion ?

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Celebrating our COVID-real moment

Recently I went to a music festival.

Not usually noteworthy, but it was a COVID-real moment; possibly one of the first large events outside footy to be held since…you know.

Because around this time 12 months ago COVID19 became real.

Many of us moved to working from home (if we weren’t already).

I ordered a desk and a chair for my “home office” (ironically both arrived around six months later because…COVID).

I took what I could (legitimately) from the work office including my plants, because though we joked that we might not be, I was still assuming I’d be back.

First lockdown was looming, though we didn’t know that then (did we?)

With the first taste of what would soon enough become familiar government restrictions, it meant in the organisation I was then working for, community services and facilities were being closed temporarily.

I introduced an internal communications function, scooping up additional staff whose roles were impacted, and started running team Zoom meetings with upwards of 18 staff at times. One day, I counted the Zoom squares. Each day, I looked at their faces, wondering how they were really going.

The first time on the lockdown merry go round, it was a kind of adventure for the first few weeks. Because, it would be over soon wouldn’t it?

In between Lockdown 1.0 and Lockdown 2.0 when life lifted for a moment, I got my hair done, tentatively saw a few of my friends, had a covid test and cried when I saw my parents, encouraged my team to get out while they could.

As a communicator dealing personally with the impact of COVID19 as well as professionally, I swung between anger, confusion and relief, always grateful for an awesome team committed to looking after each other as well as communicating any way we could to the community.

COVID19-life is still with us, though undeniably Australia is well positioned in comparison to anywhere else in the world.

This weekend, almost 12 months after ‘it all kicked off’, the overwhelming message at the music festival was centred around the excitement and gratitude of the bands and DJs who hadn’t played in front of a crowd for more than 12 months.

Regulations were in place, as were DHHS officers checking how social distancing was being managed.

The final music act had to pause to plead with excited and drunk revellers to take two steps back before they could resume because, well, humans.

Killed the buzz a bit. How very COVID. But the fact it was even possible in the first place was a moment not to miss.
So many moments, we now don’t want to miss.

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Culture – keep up

This article about how to keep/instill/grow a corporate culture in a distributed work model made me do a happy dance.
https://www-entrepreneur-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.entrepreneur.com/amphtml/364250

A combination of forced work from home (pandemic style) and choice (working for myself) gave me real insight (like many) and a further interest in the alignment between culture, HR, leadership and internal communications.

When I hear senior executives note that they can’t temperature check the health and culture of their organisation without being able to walk the floors and see people I think it’s a lazy and old-fashioned attitude. It’s also not inclusive.

Though I get it – face to face contact is amazing – managing a team during a pandemic I found that while collaboration in a remote environment does take some additional work – a distributed team is really just like any other team, whether they work face-to-face or not.

The author notes that “corporate culture is more than creating a friendly break room with comfortable chairs and bringing in a box of doughnuts on Friday – developing it means intentionally engaging employees, educating them, and providing venues for interactions, knowledge sharing and training.”

Culture is what creates a real sense of trust and engagement, he says. This is a challenge in many organisations regardless of where their employees work. The consequences of COVID-19 has just highlighted this more.

This article provides great data that indicates not only was teleworking increasing prior to COVID19 for employees as well as gig workers, but that self-employed and home-based self-employed population has grown. Add partners, third-party providers and freelancers outside of the corporate structure to the ecosystem and traditional structures including internal communications will be challenged and fail.

Despite the oft-stated importance of culture, building, maintaining and living it and whatever values are important to an organisation, it takes work – from all levels – an appropriate investment including commitment and budget, an understanding of how it connects to real life and more than lip service.

Collectively, we need to get our shit together. I can put my hand up and say my own attitude to running teams, supporting and leading organisations and living remote work life has changed markedly, and needed to. This is not reinventing the wheel and expectations have never been higher as the world shifts in post-pandemic reality.

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In an increasingly digital world, who have we left behind?

When I corrected an (incorrect) belief my more than 70 year-old Dad had about easing restrictions and what we could do, my irritation was obvious to him. Why was he not taking responsibility for himself and his own knowledge and reading the q and a on the DHHS website?

‘Now wait on,’ he cautioned me, adding. ‘I’ll read tomorrow’s (local) newspaper. I’m not looking at a website.’ 

That to him is foreign. So how else is he going to get his information? 3AW news grabs. 

With a back ground in emergency management and an extreme anxiety and interest in not getting fined (or the coronavirus), I’m a voracious newshound and reader including of Q and A. 

My Dad is not. And my more technology literate mother isn’t either. 

Everyone makes their own decisions, based on the information they have, having checked the information with their peers, friends and community networks for sense making, logic and what they’ve heard. 

Misinformation has been rife. Understanding is low and wishful thinking is rampant. Wilful misunderstanding is a reality. 

But have we – the Government, Authorities, community networks, local government – done the best we could? No.

Have we done the best we could at the time with the information we had at the time? Maybe.

Is it acceptable this far in? No. That’s a failing. 

Trying to parrot the rules to others, let alone following them, continues to be a challenge. 

Shared responsibility and accountability may be the aim.

But blame shifting should not be.

I had to tamp down my impatience with my Dad, take a deep breath and come at it from a different understanding and approach aiming for the same outcome. 

So should we all. 

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