Dan Slee

The textbook has it that after a crisis we enter the recovery period and we get over it.

Six weeks after COVID-19 lockdown and we’re on a crossroads. Some people have had enough and some people are scared. We’re part emergency part recovery and stuck between the two.

No wonder communicators are wondering which way to turn.

Last night I joined some of those communicators in a Zoom session via the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group on the topic of recovery comms. It was a really useful thought provoking session with some talented people. Here are things that struck me then and afterwards.

There is a textbook

Government has extensive notes on the classic emergency and recovery period. While all of this is unprecedented it’s reassuring there’s some ground rules. But I’ve a feeling we need to be flexible and creative with them. They don’t have all the solutions but in this world that feels as though there are no maps they’re a good starting point.

Some people will be fine with recovery and others won’t

After an emergency, some people who haven’t been affected will want to crack on. Those who have been directly won’t share that point of view.

I was struck by Bridget Aherne’s recollections of a death in service while working in fire and rescue. A firefighter died at an incident she was at. It hit people immediately connected hard. Those not affected thought that a charity fundraiser was a fine idea. Others were just not in the head space of even considering it and it caused friction, she recalled.

Listening to this I was struck by a recent conversations. A WhatsApp group contributor knows 12 people who have died of COVID-19. Just to round it off, she’s also been asked to make six of her team redundant. Recovery to her must sound a sick joke.

You need to help leadership really, really listen

Here’s a story. I used to work for an organisation that used to say that its staff are its greatest asset.  Then, the leader of that organisation went to the local paper to tell the reporter how he was going to make half the staff redundant. Only he hadn’t told the staff.

What larks!

There is absolutely a need for good internal comms but internal comms are only really an extension of really good sensitive leadership that listens to how people are and takes that into account.

So, the organisation that sends an all staff email ordering people to report back to the office first thing Monday is breathtakingly stupid. Your job as comms is to point this out. But your job may also be to provide survey data and focus groups to test the water.

You need to help your organisation have really, really good internal comms

If you’re listening really, really well you can better communicate with your staff really, well.  So, open channels that are truly two way feels like a good idea. Clarity of leadership helps. So is frequent internal comms and  trying new things that you haven’t done before. You’re going to have to be more imaginative than knocking-up a few posters to put up in the foyer of empty offices.

There is a really narrow window for cunning plans

One contributor to the session spoke of his determination to finally introduce a staff Facebook group.

Normally, this would have probably have had to go through countless hoops. But in a time of crisis the IT police have other things on their mind. Like not dying. Right now, as everything up in the air no-one is paying too much attention. Get going before the window closes.

Numbers are important

In peacetime, evaluating what you are doing is important to help show the difference you are making. Shayoni Lynn makes a good point that there is a need to capture numbers during this crisis too. When things calm down they’ll come in handy.

Speaking of which…

A new round of austerity 2.0

Lockdown is costing Government serious wedge. The UK economy is predicted to shrink by 14 per cent in 2020. That’s the largest crash in 300 years and one likely to make 2008 look like a tea party.  Other forecasts are for a 25 per cent shrink. That’s on a par with the post-1918 Depression that sewed the seeds for fascism and the Second World War.

The public sector is in for another kicking. More specifically, local government and everything that isn’t the NHS is going to be in for a shoeing. This could be the most important long-term point.

There is a really narrow window to change habits

While we have been in lockdown, we’ve had to change how we do things. Science says that twenty one days is the minimum for people to get used to something new.

So, what’s the habit that the organisation has been trying for years to change? Remote working? Working flexibly? A library service delivered Amazon-style by post and not books and mortar?

While on the one hand, maxing out on the business objectives while bombs are dropping feels like sending an email telling people that it’s a good day to bury bad news there is actually something in it. But then again.

Pace comes from Government but you need to be the slip fielder anticipating

Deciding when this whole recovery phase begins and ends isn’t in any one person’s gift but the starting pistol is absolutely fired by Government.

Laws to govern lockdown are drawn-up by Government and Parliament. Your chief executive needs to cool their boots and see where 10 Downing Street is heading. But they needs help in anticipating.

Local government communicator Sara Hamilton describes feeling as though she was having to think two weeks ahead of the rest of the organisation at the start of this crisis. That’s a smart. Like a good slip fielder on the cricket pitch, anticipation and being ready is going to be vital.

Shit, the mental health

We have a really good habit in Britain in applauding those we send into battle but when they come back we look the other way. In 2018, there were 60,000 homeless servicemen and rates of PTSD amongst service people are frightening.

I can’t begin to imagine what working in ICU must feel like right now. I have an eye on comms people who have worked 70-hour weeks since this started. Stress was already at almost 70 per cent rates in the public sector even before this.

But I’m not convinced this crisis is entirely textbook

Of course, the standard thing is for a crisis and then recovery and everyone gets on with their lives apart from those whose lives have been shattered.

So far in the UK, 30,000 lives have been shattered. That’s more than who died in the blitz. If you put the coffins of those who have died end to end it will stretch for 42 miles and take two hours driving at hearse speed to get past.

The impact of this will be as profound as anything in my lifetime.

While the discussion is recovery, we’re only through the first peak. There are likely to be more. We’ve had the equivalent of 312 Hillsborough disasters so far. We’re at a stage where only having six of them a day is somehow heralded as success.

If we’re honest, and to use a wartime analogy, we’ve had the worst bombing raid in our lives and some of us are climbing out of the Anderson shelters. But the bombers haven’t gone away and will be back in force. We’re at first peak and history says there will be more.

There is no map.

Anyone expecting to be spoon-fed is in for a shock.

But bright communicators can draw on some basic principles and make an absolute difference.

Thanks to all those who took part in the Public Sector Comms Headspace group Zoom chat.  It made me feel oddly optimistic. 

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr.

 

 

 

A picture dropped into my timeline this week on facebook from three years ago and it made me smile. 

Posted seven years ago by one of the West Midlands Police Twitter accounts it captures an announcement in Cradley Heath Post Office.

Staff had written the announcement in long hand after a controversial change to how car tax was collected. I forget the detail. At the time it annoyed a lot of people.

What makes the sign brilliant is that it is written in Black Country. So, car tax is ‘car tox’. HMRC becomes ‘money mon’. You get the picture.

The image is here:

Why this is brilliant

The poster gets photographed. It gets shared online. It does two things. It tells people in there are changes but don’t shout at the staff. It also shows that the staff are human.

A while back Dudley Council made a Black Country dialect sign warning of road works. It got an overwhelmingly positive reaction and traffic flow fell which was the aim of the sign. Someone from Scotland, I remember, was quite dismissive at the time. Looking into it it was because lots of people do this with their Scottish comms and it was seen as a bit old hat. Thing is, people don’t do it in the Black Country.

People like the fact that they have a regional difference. They celebrate it. They also connect to it. Ten miles outside the Black Country and people will scratch their heads. But in the Black Country, oh boy.

Sometimes regional dialect deployed with the help of someone who speaks it goes down perfectly.

Yes, but this is a police account

It is. It’s great for the Post Office that a poster is being shared as it gets their message out. It’s also good for the police. Police police by consent. They are part of the community and the community agree to give them extra powers for the good of the community. It’s important for a good police force to know that and be aware. At times, such as Toxteth in 1981 and Tottenham in 1985 that consent breaks down with violent results. So, showing a human face here is good.

It’s also good from a social media point of view. If all your content is a call to action people get bored very quickly.

 

 

After seven weeks of lockdown it seems that comms people are missing other people the most.

Three times in the last few days it’s people rather than tools that people say they need.

It seems comms people miss someone to vent with, compare notes with, roll their eyes at and then move on to the next thing.

I’m not sure why that surprises me but it does.

But hearing it it somehow doesn’t surprise me at all.

At the heart of it, I think, is a feeling that we’re all in strange new territory. When the 19th century European settlers headed across America towards the promise of the Pacific blue coast of California they did so in wagon trains that shared the load.

What we’re doing is a similar journey separately but together.

It’s important to know you’re not alone, you’re doing the best you can and that connecting is the most human thing you can do.

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr.

I’ve been banging a couple of drums these past few weeks about the role that your frontline people play in all this.

The nurse, the care worker, the binman or the firefighter all have a massive role to play.

We’ve seen ‘Stay Safe, Stay Home, Protect the NHS’ and we’re tiring of it.

Putting a human face on it showing how frontline people are working with it renews it and helps it land.

The human face cuts through in a way a politician or senior officer cannot. I’ve blogged the data to win the argument about not turning always to politicians here. In this post I’ll show crowdsourced examples of real people’s stories.

Big thank you to Public Sector Comms Headspace members Stephen Penman, Nikki Todhunter, Emma Pettis, Jack Showell, Paul Compton, Mark Miller and Kellie Thompson for contributing ideas.

Sharon’s human appeal for PPE

Sharon the Home Care worker was the face of this North Lanarkshire Council video that appealed for protective equipment at the start of April. It’s lovely. Sharon comes over well and Stephen Penman and his team can be proud of the 20,000 items it generated and a lead to a key supplier. A side benefit was the fact that businesses felt connected because they could help even though it may only be a box of gloves.

You can see the clip here.

Hospital staff’s video message about dignity in dying

NHS Grampian’s video message from hospital staff raises the issue of dignity in dying.

It offers thanks for the 8pm round of applause every Thursday but it also changes the conversation slightly to focus on those who have lost loved ones. It talks of how nursing staff take care and pride in offering death with dignity when they can no longer save a life. That’s an awkward thing to do and the fact that the scripted message is delivered in a hospital setting by nursing staff who may have been involved makes it powerful.

You can see it here.

Hannah’s diary about being redeployed

Staff are being asked work out of their comfort zone because of the impact that COVID-19 is having on their employer.

What was once a regular job may have disappeared and new tasks are needed to be done.

So, the example of Hannah who has been asked to carry out new duties is interesting. She works for Cumbria, Northumberland and Tyne & Wear NHS Trust. She talks about her anxiety and her worries. She talks about the help she got settling into the new tasks. She talks about how that felt and how she feels as though she is doing something helpful. It is not North Korean positive. She talks of her apprehension. It’s all the more powerful for that.

Also notable is that while a prime audience may be staff it’s posted onto the Trust website so the public can read too.

You can read the blog post diary here.

Andy the binman’s Facebook post about messages of support

Bin crews are still working to take away waste.

On his rounds, Andy noticed the messages of thanks he was getting from people attached to the bins they were leaving out.  So, he took them home, photographed them and posted them onto Facebook.

Horsham Council’s comms team to their credit re-posted the image onto the corporate news feed.  This is perfect. A human voice being recognised by a council.

You can see the post here.

A binman says ‘thank you’

This bin crew was videoed with a message of thanks for support by West Sussex Council.

It does what it needs to. A human voice with recognition of the support they’ve been shown and a request to clean bin handles and park safely so lorries and emergency vehicles can get past.

It has a broad Sussex voice for a Sussex audience.

You can see it here.

Jack’s human message about driving ambulances

Firefighter Jack Charles normally drives fire appliances but during COVID-19 he’s been switched to driving ambulances.

Devon and Somerset shot a video of the officer talking in the back of an ambulance about his new role. He’s already trained for driving under blue lights, he says. He’s also trained to give lifesaving first aid.

“In the meantime, stay home and stay safe,” he reminds us.

You can see the video here.

Some important numbers for you if you’re in the public sector trying to communicate to people.

A majority of people trust you.

If you’re NHS then boy, you’re in for a treat.

Survation have published some UK-specific survey numbers with a towering 81 per cent trusting the NHS followed by 70 per cent Scottish Government, 56 per cent Welsh Government, 54 per cent UK Government, 52 per cent local government and 48 per cent Northern Ireland Executive.

Interestingly, the organisation you work for at 64 per cent scores highly. So, get the message to that big employer’s internal comms team and you can have your message even more trusted.

Here are the numbers

SURVATION: polling says the UK public sector is trusted

News media is less trusted

The BBC remains the most trusted source of broadcast news media with no national newspaper title getting past 39 per cent. The Sun is bottom with 14 per cent. Frustratingly, local news media isn’t there.

COMSCORE: People are heading to news sites

Anecdotally, people are visiting news sites less but that’s not borne out in the numbers.

New Europe-wide data from Comscore would appear to show the immediate search for news from news sites hasn’t diminished in the UK.

YOUGOV: People trust scientists not politicians

Sky News published YouGov stats that showed trust for politicians as low but the trust in UK Government scientific expert Chris Whitty high. This chimes with long established pre-lockdown data that says our trust in politicians is low. Journalists score overwhelmingly negatively in the trust score.

REUTERS INSTITUTE: News organisations are trusted

While journalists individually appear to fare badly in other polling news organisations as a whole fare better. In total, 57 per cent of UK people trust them according to the Institute’s April 28 data.

However, councils fare less well on the yardstick of how they are responding to COVID-19 with 36 per cent approval compared to 92 per cent NHS and 54 per cent Government.

IPSOS MORI: Journalists are best at holding Government to account

From a collection of data, there’s a few things you need to know if you are public sector.

On balance, more people think that journalists are doing a good job than a bad one. In my timeline, some vocal people are criticising the performance of reporters at the daily news conference. But the UK population don’t all see it that way. For them, they are the best at holding Government to account.

 

So what does all that mean?

• Firstly, if you’re public sector thank you and keep up the good work. It’s tempting to be deflected by the handful of the hard to avoid who hate everything you do and will fill part of their day telling you. They’re not representative.
• Internal comms is powerful. It doesn’t have to be yours it can be anyone’s. There’s big trust towards the organisation you work for.
• People are still heading to news sites in large numbers compared to their pre-lockdown habits but they’re not trusting all they read.
• Politicians are not the people to be putting up for interview if you want people to trust what they are saying.
•  Journalists are not trusted but they are getting the most credit for holding the Government to account.
• Local government needs to do a better job in telling people what it is doing in response to COVID-19 but people get and value what the NHS do.

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr

 

 

All this will be won or lost on Facebook.

All this will be won or lost if people follow the advice stay, safe and stay home.

All this will be won or lost if we have NHS staff willing to put themselves in harm’s way.

This is Leanne and she posted a selfie to her own Facebook timeline and made it public.

In two days it has been shared 35,000 times.

What she’s doing is interesting. She’s making the appeal to stay safe, stay home and protect the NHS but she’s also showing with her face the impact of not doing it. It is careworn and tired. She doesn’t want to go back to hell. How can you refuse a request from that face?

Is your comms anywhere near that human?

How can you tap into that?

 

 

A lifetime ago I was a assistant chief reporter in a district office of twelve.

There were seven deadlines and two schedules a day and it wasn’t uncommon for us to clear a hundred stories a day.

Every day was a crisis until it dawned on me that crisis was normal. It would be a crisis if its wasn’t a crisis.

I read a good meme posted by A&E Twitter last week with words to share from the Ebola epidemic to people in the medical profession.

There is no emergency in a pandemic.

During the Ebola outbreak, people were dying. But at no point did we rush in, we took the 10 minutes to put on our PPE with our spotter. If we didn’t have proper PPE we did NOT go in.

There is no emergency in a pandemic.

You may work in long term care, and want to rush in to save a patient you have had for years. Do not go in without your PPE.

There is no emergency in a pandemic.

You may have a survivor in the room, screaming at you to come in because their mother is crashing. Do not go in without your PPE.

There is no emergency in a pandemic.

You may have an infected woman in labor. Screaming for help. Do not go in without your PPE.

There is no emergency in a pandemic.

You may have a self-quarantined patient with a gunshot wound who is bleeding out. Do not go in there without your PPE.

There is no emergency in a pandemic.

It would be wrong to equate A&E with a newsroom or a public sector comms team even though the right message well delivered does save lives. But there is something in the broad lesson of pacing yourself, pacing your team and just breathing. If you go down you can help no-one. 

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr

I was involved in a WhatsApp discussion in a group I’m in on the need to build hope in a time of crisis.

Hope is the thing that keeps people walking towards the bright light at the end of the tunnel.

Sure, public sector communications needs to warn and inform and do all of those really things. But I’ve been reflecting for a while that if all it does is warn and inform without hope people will switch off.

In Britain in the Second World War, the Mass Observation project captured what people were really thinking.  The results shaped public policy and its communications. Historians have used them to comprehensively debunk the popular idea of the blitz spirit.

What are people thinking now?

Fear in part but a grudging acceptance of the normal.

We are through the first phase of covid-19 communications and need to establish what the second phase looks like. The first phase was warning posters and a request to ‘stay safe, save lives, protect the NHS.’ Phase two needs to be human. But they need to come from people rather than politicians. We can feel hope and we can recognise it when we see it. We can’t be told to hope on demand by a politician.

If my postman and the nurse who lives in my street gives me hope then I’ll feel hope too.

Picture credit: Flickr / Documerica 

 

 

Amazon’s email template got accidentally posted to the internet this week.

It’s a colour-by-numbers template for how to communicate and gives an insight into how a large company communicates.

The template is writing by formula and given Amazon’s multi-billion pound worth there’s probably something in it.

Start with an image, a short summarising headline and then the length of the sentences.

It’s the sentence length that really grabs me.

Short, short, short and then allow yourself to be long and florid and allow the text to sing.

Statista shows that 89 per cent of the UK population over 16 send and receive email monthly.

Yet the average open rates for the UK are marginally less than 25 per cent.

It’s tempting just to cut and paste the Amazon approach into all your email marketing. It’s the golden fleece! Surely? But the thing about Amazon is they experiment and test.

You give that a go.

 

 

And all of a sudden Facebook Live has burst from the shadows to be the important platform it was always going to be.

Since covid-19 lockdown the numbers of people watching the platform have gone up by 50 per cent in the US. They’re likely to be similar in the UK, too.

There is three large carrots when it comes to using Facebook Live if you’re a page admin.

Firstly, there’s useful numbers who are using it and secondly, the algorithm will reward you by showing it to more people. You’ll also bask in an afterglow as it helps your other content, too.

All this breaks down to two things, planning and delivering going live. Here’s a quick post to help you decide if this channel is for you.

Facebook Live in a nutshell

Facebook Live allows you to live stream video. You can use your own account, a group or a page. People can interact with you live.

EIGHT steps to planning a good Facebook Live

As with anything, put some thought into it first and you’ll get better results.

ONE: Work it what the point is

Firstly, have a purpose to using Facebook Live. Don’t do it for the sake of it. What’s the point?

There’s a few reasons why you may want to. Fundamentally, you do it because the value of being in THAT spot NOW so you can talk to them and they can see what you’re doing.

They can include:

A Q&A on a topic.

A behind the scenes tour.

 Some special access.

TWO: Work out what the Sword of Damocles is

Create a reason to keep watching.

So, if you’re running a behind the scenes tour of somewhere promise to meet with someone people would like to meet.

They can include:

Meet the artist behind the exhibition

See the politician being grilled for a Q&A session.

Wait for the painting to be unveiled.

Watch out for the hand grenade that’s about to be detonated by the Army bomb squad. 

THREE: Get and then test your kit

On the face of it, all your need is your smartphone and a robust wifi connection to do a really basic Facebook Live. Simple. But to have a safety net its worth having a bit more.

For an ultra basic Facebook Live you need A charged smartphone and a wifi connection.

 For a basic Facebook Live you need: A charged smartphone and a wifi connection. A powerbank to make sure of your charge. A MiFi to give you a back-up wifi signal. A tripod for your phone or tablet. 

For a more advanced Facebook Live you need. A laptop and a webcam and a wifi connection. If you use this route, you can use Facebook’s Live Producer which you can access via your page through a laptop. This gives you lots of control over who can comment and other troll-busting tools. 

For a broadcaster quality Facebook Live you need: Lights, camera, action and a load of other things too. I’ll leave that to the experts. 

It’s always worth taking your kit to where you’ll look to do the broadcast and then practice. You can practice with your phone or tablet by broadcasting but first changing the settings so you are broadcasting to just yourself. I’ve blogged how to do a practice Facebook Live here. Practicising can help put the interviewee at ease. It’s also a chance to test your wifi. Don’t rely on 4G or venue wifi if its a big event. You’ll come unstuck.

FOUR: Get a back-up team

Decide who to have in front of your camera but also – and this is really important – have someone on your team who is monitoring the feed. Establish a bcak channel with your back-up, too. WhatsApp is good for this. The back-up can do two really important things. First, check to see if the stream is working okay and you haven’t put your camera on its side by accident. Second, vet the questions. There’s nothing that can floor someone than reading live during a broadcast that someone watching thinks you’re a twit.

FIVE: Have an ejector seat

If things go really horribly wrong and your guest starts swearing then have your back-up team ready to kill the broadcast. End. Finish. Cut. No more. It’s unlikely to happen but if you have a plan in place you’ll probably won’t need it.

SIX: Yes, GDPR is a factor

If you are shooting video then you are recording people and yes folks, that’s personal data and yes, staff need to give consent too.

To crack this, you can do two things. Firsty, a guest you’re likely to be interviewing needs to complete a permission form that you need to store. Secondly, if you’re in a more public spot you can post a disclaimer on the entry saying that you are filming and by entering they’re giving their consent. Also give them the chance to opt-out by speaking to a steward. This may be fine for a conference, press conference or a election count. I’d think twice before using Facebook Live in a public place. The risk of something going wrong escalates with more public involvement.

SEVEN: Get your audio right

Be really mindful that your phone’s mic on its own isn’t that great and you’ll struggle if the room is echoey or there’s more than one person. In normal times, I’d suggest a clip-on mic. But in the era of social distancing, looking into it, a boom, mic and dead cat to muffle the wind is what I’m trying out.

SEVEN: Draw-up a plan for the broadcast

Let’s think about a tour of a museum stores and a chat with the museum’s curator.

You’ve practiced at the venue and you’ve ironed out the chance of a wifi blackhole which would disrupt or end your broadcast.

Your plan is…

A – Greet the viewers at the shelves which have industrial equipment.

B – Walk round to meet the curator Joanne Brown at a table to see three items.

C – Unveil the Medieval pot found during an Archeological in the castle grounds.

Work out how long this is going to take and leave yourself a list of prompts to recap on every five or six minutes. People will be joining and leaving all the time. One good tip is to think about how radio does this.

Hello, welcome to the museum where we’ll be talking to curator Joanne Brown where we’ll see the first glimpse of the Medieval pot but first we’re seeing the industrial equipment.

Then becomes:

We’ve seen the industrial equipment and now we’re seeing the Medieval pot. 

If you’re filming holding your device then a map holder around your neck with the plan in so you can see it is handy.

EIGHT: Promote, promote, promote

If you’re looking to go live at 2pm on Thursday then tell people for days in advance. Tell them offline, on your website, on Twitter, in an email bulletin. Schedule the broadcast (scroll down for how to do that.) Create an event.

Going live

If you’re going live on your phone knock yourself out. Enjoy yourself and don’t forget to end the broadcast when its done. Look to post it back onto your timeline so those who missed it can see it too. Your numbers are likely to be far greater if you re-post the finished thing.

Look to shoot something that’s at least three minutes long and preferably around 20 minutes. If you follow your plan and build some interaction that’ll be really easy to do.

Write a description when you go live that makes the thing sound interesting. So, yes to ‘A behind the scenes tour of Oxdown museum and the first glimpse of the Medieval pot.’ No to the rather dull ‘Our Facebook Live.’

Going live with Live Producer

Facebook’s Live Producer is great.

It’s free and full of extra functionality to make your broadcast run smoothly. It also irons out some of the problems from early broadcasts that pose a bit of a headache to public sector people.

If you’re going live via Facebook’s Live Producer there’s a few things you can do ahead of time. Using it with a page gives you a few extra pieces of functionality.

Live Producer with a page

There’s a list of options that will work for public sector communicators.

You can schedule a live video.

You can restrict comments only to your followers.

You can slow down the rate of comment to one every 10-seconds.

You can ensure all comments have to be 100 characters minimum.

You can restrict commenters to accounts more than two weeks old.

You can also make sure commenters have been following for at least 15-minutes.

Live Producer with a group or your own profile

The functionality is a lot more limited. But the chances are the people who are in your group you know and are part of your community rather than randoms who shout.

You can allow viewers to rewind.

Simple.

Five examples of Facebook Live video to learn from

The British Museum give a tour of their new exhibition on The Scythians.

English Heritages’ Discovering Titian’ which shows an art historian introduce a painting.

West Midlands Police live street watch tackling burglary in Selly Oak.

Record label Reckless Yes host Mark Morriss to talk about his new album.

A storytime for young children hosted by Tamarack library in Michigan in the USA.

Picture credit: SDASM / Flickr