That headline may mean nothing to you.
I hope it doesn’t. But many of our larger clients – charities especially, but also corporates and others – have associates – many that are not even widely known about – with offices across the world.
Last year we got a call from a major UK charity. A household name and regular daytime TV advertiser. Yet two of their volunteers had been arrested on rape allegations made by a young local woman. The volunteers only spoke English and there was some ambiguity about the amount of alcohol that may or may not have been a factor in the alleged event.
Either way, the UK charity was suddenly trending in social media and its reputation was tanking. And with any charity reputation is all.
We got the call before it went fully public and delivered some our advice was as follows:
• How much is actually known as opposed to speculation?
• Have the charity workers admitted any misdemeanour and if so how severe compared to the charges?
• Are they still in the country?
• Are the local police involved and if so have charges been brought?
• Has the accuser’s story changed in any way?
This was a complex issue as there was little doubt that the charity workers had abused their position, but to what extent was unclear. Local media, inevitably, picked up on the story and took it very much from the ‘victim’s’ perspective.
We assisted the UK charity’s senior staff on how best to manage the media – boiling it down to neither admitting guilt prior to any formal legal proceedings or innocence when all the evidence pointed to something inappropriate having occurred.
In media training terms, senior staff should always have a basic level of crisis training just in case the unthinkable happens. That should be kept up to date and a clear chain of command kept in place so staff know who the lead should be if, say, the CEO is on holiday or the HR Director is on leave.
Remember we’ve been doing this for 30 years and have dealt with everything from deaths on site to inappropriate senior staff behaviour so the more prepared you are for that event which will ‘never happen’ the better.