I’ve been fortunate to have worked with some fantastic clients this past year. I am confident they’re entering 2020 more self-confident in their abilities to manage Emergency Public Information during a crisis event. Some of them came from industry, others were from municipalities, and the rest were a mix of emergency managers, police, firefighters and communicators.
I love the diversity of bringing teams together, especially if they don’t regularly train together. It’s essential to get differing perspectives and to discuss interpretations of roles and responsibilities for those responding to an emergency. I want them leaving my sessions understanding the critical need for sharing verified information as quickly as possible with those impacted and the specific role they play in making that happen.
A firefighter at the scene of an incident needs to know how to quickly pull together sound bites with key messages for an on-scene media scrum as much as a corporate communicator needs to understand how to verify and share timely and accurate information about an emergency that has a public impact. They both need to know why being proactive and responsive is so very critical to the success of the response itself. But let’s be honest, your audience isn’t giving you a pass or fail on the response – they’re grading you on how you communicated throughout the response.
As you think about your emergency management goals for 2020, consider making preparedness a top priority.
Here are some suggestions for your list:
