Expo 2018: Crisis communications

and reputation management

5 September 2018

@NHSCommsDev

#NHSCommsDev

Today’s session aims to…

• Introduce you to crisis communications and reputation

management;

• Explain how incident management works in the NHS;

• Explore what it is like receiving crisis communications

advice as a leader during a major incident;

• Give you the chance to ask questions of the panel; and

• Test your crisis communications skills.

Introducing our speakers

• Phil Groves-NHS Improvement

• Ash Canavan-NHS England

• Andy Hyett-Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust

What do we mean by a crisis…

• An event or issue that comes from within your organisation and

prevents all or some of your core services or functions from

running normally.

• An external event that causes a significant increase in demand

for your services, and/or prevents them from operating normally.

• An event that, while not impacting the day-to-day running of your

organisation risks long-term viability through significant damage

to reputation.

Poll

• Do you have a crisis communications plan in your

organisation?

• Is it integrated with your organisational major incident plan?

• Do you have action cards which are carried by your duty

staff?

• Have you looked at it in the past few months?

• Have you tested it?

• Do you feel confident that you could handle a major incident

or period of reputational crisis in your organisation?

The role of communications Signal detection

• Pick up risks from stakeholders and report into organisation

• Ensure effective two-way communications both inside and outside organisation

Probing and prevention

• Work to understand and solve/mitigate grievances of stakeholders

• If changes needs to happen to prevent event – explain

• Be ready – build reputation and preparedness

• Keep monitoring and detecting signals

Damage containment

• Stakeholder management

• Be open and own the issue

• Apologise (if necessary) and be ready to explain what you’re doing

• Call to action – what do you need/want people to do to help

• Signpost people

Recovery

• The issue doesn’t stop!

• Give regular progress updates on what you’re doing – be the source of knowledge and fact

• Continue to own the issue

• You said/we did approach works really well

• Keep supporting staff

Learning and evaluation

• Don’t use to assign blame

• Where did the process work well and where did it fail?

• Comms feedback isn’t just for comms!

• Show to stakeholders that you’ve changed.

• Identify how all stages could improve –particularly signal detection!

Before During After

Mitroff (1994) five stages of crisis management – adapted for communications

Planning for unplanned events

• The amount of planning you do in advance will determine how successfully you handle an unplanned event.

• The best crisis communications plans build on relationships built in

‘peacetime’ – taking the time to build a brand and reputation that

people trust will be invaluable when things go wrong.

• The NHS is a public body. Sometimes things do go wrong and we

should be open and learn from them. No matter how serious the issue,

we should never engage in ‘spin’ or say anything that isn’t true.

• We should always act in the best interest of patients.

Planning basics• Communications should be a key part of your organisational major

events planning.

• You can’t prepare for every event. But you can agree roles, responsibilities and an action plan.

• Know with whom you’ll need to communicate, how you’d contact

them out of hours and how you’ll do it.

• Have a plan for how you’ll operate – major incidents can happen

when you’re off sick.

• Know where you can go for help.

How incident management works in the NHS

Ash Canavan

National EPRR Communications Lead

NHS England

Why we prepare for emergencies

EPRR framework incident levels

Level 4 incident response

The Salisbury comms model

How can we support you

• NHS England and NHS Improvement have regional communications

teams that can provide advice and support

• NHS Improvement also offer media and crisis communications training

for both comms and non-comms staff. This can be accessed through

the regional teams

• We also offer on the ground support during a major incident

Receiving communications advice as a leader in a crisis

Andy Hyett Chief Operating OfficerSalisbury NHS Foundation Trust

16

What is a Major Incident (overall definition)?

A Major Incident is any event whose impact cannot be

handled within routine service arrangements.

It requires the implementation of special procedures by

one or more of the Emergency Services, the NHS or Local

Authority to respond to it.

Declarations of Major Incident

5th March 2018 @ 08.03 SFT declared an internal major incident

5th March 2018 @ 10.10 SFT declared a multi-agency Major Incident

23rd March 2018 @ 10.00 SFT stood down from Major Incident response to ‘Enhanced

state of preparedness’ as approved by NHS England

23rd May 2018 SFT stood down from “enhanced state of preparedness” – 75 days of

response

Inpatient Casualties

Index YS – 09/04/2018

Index SS – 18/05/2018

Declaration of Major Incident (2) July 2018

• 1st Index case arrived at ED SFT 30th June 2018 – transferred to ITU 12.18

• 2nd Index case arrived at ED SFT 30th June 2018 – transferred to ITU 21.11

• 3rd July 2018 @ 22.27 Wiltshire Police declared multi-agency major incident

• 3rd July @ 23.10 SFT officially declared major incident

• 19th July 2018 @ 17.30 SFT stood down from major incident response into

recovery, as approved by NHS England (17 days of response)

• Recovery phase ongoing

Comms – my view

• I am not a Comms expert• Everybody wants to know everything• Managing the press is massively labour intensive • Comms Networks• Understand the language• Internal comms, external comms• VIPs – 2 home secretaries, PM, Royals, MD• Ice cream

Lessons – my view

• Tactical Commander / not a Comms expert• Where is your Comms resource• Comms training vs the reality• Knowing what you have to say and what you don’t• Knowing when to answer questions• Being clear what is in your remit and what isn't• I wish I had known what resources are out there• I was exhausted

Any questions?

Crisis communications exercise

St Martin’s NHS Foundation Trust is based in a small market town in the East of England. It has one site – an acute hospital – and has a catchment area that is largely rural. The site is on low lying land outside the main

town and the majority of staff drive to reach it. There is a main building which houses all patient services, including the Emergency Department,

The hospital was built in the 1970s and now struggles to cope with the numbers using it – particularly the ED which has failed to meet national waiting time targets for nearly two years.

After several days of unusually heavy rain, the ground is saturated and stormy conditions have led to flash flooding. A local river, which goes through the town, has burst its banks. Areas of the town have been hit hard, with the High Street underwater. The hospital main building is unaffected, but six of the trust’s fifteen car parks are unusable. In addition, several of the local roads are closed to traffic meaning that staff are struggling to get

into work.

It is continuing to rain and the forecast is that the rain will get worse over the next 24 hours. The Met Office has a severe flood warning in place.

Your Chief Operating Officer has asked you to put together a plan for what communications activity you think you’ll need to undertake.

FICTICIOUS EXERCISE FOR TRAINING PURPOSES

FICTICIOUS EXERCISE FOR TRAINING PURPOSES

FICTICIOUS EXERCISE FOR TRAINING PURPOSES

End of exercise

Session recap