Health and Safety

Maybe you think that if only those PR people would do their job properly, there wouldn’t be all the media outrage about “health & safety” gone mad - and the public would have more respect for risk management.

Well, as a professional public relations consultant, I thought it would be interesting to borrow Matt’s blogging chair and provide the PR perspective.

We are often at the recovery end of these matters - it may be that the press has picked up on a decision made by management that strikes the journalist as wonderfully ludicrous. Let’s call that the “bonkers conkers” example, that Matt is fond of discussing. I’ll come back to those later.

The more strategic issues come in the form of corporate crises - frequently requiring us to protect the organisation’s reputation as a result of a lapse in health and safety. In general, we are very good at working with the media to respond to serious disasters. The PR process has been refined over many decades, with the golden rule relating to communicating quickly, openly and continuously with all relevant stakeholders, particularly journalists. Ensuring that the PR team is integral in any crisis plan is a message that most organisations have understood. Normally this will include media relations training for anyone called upon to explain the organisation’s position.

The corporate crisis should be rare for any particular organisation - but you can find examples any day of the week. Today, I note that ICL has been fined £400,000 over an explosion at its Glasgow factory. When the original incident occurred in 2004, the PR team will have reacted immediately - and today they should have been prepared to respond to media enquiries.

The way that any organisation is judged today in response to a major crisis owes a lot to the professional PR approach. In some cases, this leads to challenges - two senior PR executives at BAA in the UK have recently quit their jobs, apparently as a result of being informed by the Spanish company owners that they should not engage with media enquiries and simply provide only agreed facts. PR is not simply a matter of publishing agreed statements or responding to a crisis once it has occurred.

Those in PR and H&S have a lot in common and should work closely together primarily to prevent the problems that generate the newspaper headlines. Our expertise in explaining how the media will respond to an issue can be a vital element of risk management.

The key question in PR crisis management is “What if”? As part of the management team considering any key decision that encompasses risk, PR professionals are able to counsel on strategies that should be avoided and the best way to communicate with those affected by any change in practice. This includes using our expertise for internal communications too.

Which brings me back to “bonkers conkers” - with our media relations hats on, we can see why such stories capture the media, and public attention. They often make a great story, meaning something that will be passed on by word of mouth. Journalists know this and recognise how the example can draw upon stereotypes such as political correctness, European bureaucracy, nanny state, or waste of taxpayers’ money, to get a reaction from the public.

Again, media reaction should be part of the risk management of any policy that has the potential for generating headlines. If such decisions must be taken, expert PR advice can construct suitable wording for internal communications, policy documents and press statements.

Once you’ve got a journalist on the phone, gleeful at the potential to generate headlines about bonkers conkers, it is much harder for us to do our job. We probably have minutes to provide a quote or respond to the “allegations” put to us. The journalist will be reluctant to bin their story - if we are lucky, we can add a voice of reason. But giving factual information about risk and responsibilities at that time, isn’t going to help.

At these times, I believe our only chance of avoiding becoming a laughing stock is to use humour. We have to roll with the story and be seen as seeing the funny side (even with serious issues). I know this works when handling such criticism - I once worked for a car company where a sporty model was slated by Jeremy Clarkson as less likely to attract the women then having a 12 inch cucumber down his trousers. So I sent him a gift wrapped cucumber by taxi from Harrods - he loved the joke and admitted he was wrong in his next column.

You might not understand the mentality of journalists, but an experienced PR practitioner should know when a full blown crisis plan is necessary, and when the headlines need a lighter touch. Now where did I keep that bag of conkers?