Business Continuity:What’s in it for you?

Vicki BalesPeterborough City Council

Resilience Services16th September 2010

Business What?

Resilience Services

• Emergency Planning• Business Continuity• Risk Management• CCTV• Internal Health and Safety• Events Safety

Emergency Planning

• Contingency plans for incidents affecting community • Assist Emergency Services• Care for Community – displaced people etc• Recovery

• Flooding, pipeline breach, terrorism, transport accident, industrial action, chemical spill, heatwave, mass fatalities, pandemic outbreak …

Business Continuity – the Council

• Internal plans for all council services – Maintain and recover essential services

• External promotion and advice to commercial and voluntary sector – General advice – website etc

– Specific assistance on request

Manchester Bombing 1996

Cumbria November 2009

What’s in it for you?

• Staff welfare and reassurance• Customer confidence• Good management decision-making• Protection of your reputation• Reduced recovery expenditure and litigation threat

• How many of these does your insurance policy cover?

It’s not rocket science

• Good communications – could you contact all your staff and customers right now if you had to?

• Store information off-site… including the BC plan!• Define roles and responsibilities• Network and share information • Buddy systems – buildings and services. Do you share a

customer base with anyone?

What do you do next?

• Ask for help - lots of free advice and templates around• www.peterborough.gov.uk/businesscontinuity• The council can:

– Help you write your plan

– Run a group or company workshop– Run an exercise

• Please ask us!

Project ARGUS

• Facilitated by NaCTSO and Cambridgeshire Police• Aimed at crowded spaces: shopping centres, sports

venues, night-time economy, events etc• Also tailored for business/community forums• Interactive multi-media exercise• Oh and it’s free!• www.nactso.gov.uk

Vicki Bales: Senior Business Continuity and Risk Officer

Peterborough City Council

01733 207208 07753 564880

victoria.bales@peterborough.gov.uk

www.peterborough.gov.uk/businesscontinuity

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The Pitfalls of Social Media

Karen McNulty

16th September 2010

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Potential Pitfalls

• Content

• Comments

• Customer service

• Spamming

• Social crisis management

• Time

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What happened next?

• Millions of views on YouTube

• Customers disgusted and posted on Twitter

• Dominos did not have Twitter account at this point

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Content

• Managing staff who participate• Longevity of content on the web• Lack of anonymity• Open and transparent – risky or right?• Viral nature of social media• Time required• Guidelines or policy advisable

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Content Guidelines

• Remain open and transparent

• Only discuss what you’re qualified to talk about

• Think about what you’re contributing to “the conversation” (value)

• Should be complementing corporate image of the business

• Admit mistakes and address openly

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Vodaphone

More than 8,500 Vodafone customers / followers received the following content:

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Vodaphone’s (repeated) response

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Lessons

• Impossible to cover up on social media

• The bigger the mistake the further it will travel

• Apologise openly, sincerely

• Be alert to pranks

• Always think before posting!

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Managing Comments on blogs

• Answering – Address negatives– Thank positives– Build relationships

• Blocking comments from individuals

• Deleting or moderating

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What should you do?

• Always allow comments

• Set to check first ideally

• Respond appropriately

• Take complaints off-line and block individuals if inappropriate

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Decide who can comment

Moderate

Blogger.com

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Managing comments on other social networks

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Customer Service• By being involved you can monitor your brand

• You can respond before somebody else does

• Provides customers with another channel to contact you

• Positive PR magnified as a result of real time responding

• s

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Naked Wines Example

EConsultancy

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Traditional tools

• Press releases

• Press conference

• Video press release

• Statements

• Dedicated contact

• Agreed process

• Monitor and feedback

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Dealing with crisis socially

• Get engaged sooner rather than later

• Responsibilities in team

• Social research

• News on website

• Blog or dedicated response page

• Domain name?

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Social tools

• Tracking online

• Twitter release

• Facebook – dedicated group– Fan page

• YouTube video message

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Thank you.

For crisis management advice (on and offline), to learn how to manage your social media or how to use PR to raise your profile the right way, talk to us:

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