Crisis management

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Respond to crises with confidence

Organisations are rarely punished solely for falling into crisis. The damage is often done by failing to respond effectively, authentically and quickly. Freshwater is an award-winning consultancy with more than two decades of crisis management experience. And we have the skills, resources and expertise to help you through a crisis.

 

Rapid crisis management

If you are in the midst of a crisis, or facing a significant threat to your reputation, speed of response counts. We have the strength in depth to respond swiftly, with a team of crisis management specialists based either side of the M4, and a network of trusted consultants across the UK.

Comprehensive crisis management

We can bring much-needed crisis experience and additional capacity to your communications team, and will get boots on the ground quickly. This includes short and long-term secondments to embed seasoned Freshwater crisis management specialists within your organisation, as well as high level strategic counsel for your Board.

 

Getting to grips with the crisis

We can help you get ahead of the story by cutting through the noise to establish the facts and those most affected or at risk. We can help prioritise what you do next and put things into perspective. And we place those most negatively affected at the centre of our response – setting the wheels in motion to rebuild your reputation from hour one.

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Monitoring and analysis in crisis communications

We offer real-time media monitoring to stay abreast of the news cycle and coordinate timely proactive and reactive media relations to help communicate the facts. We work with the media and roll out crisis management plans across multiple channels to ensure we offer timely, accurate and consistent information as part of the crisis response.

We use social listening tools to track how a crisis evolves on social media so we can engage, and respond quickly as issues emerge.

We analyse government, parliament and non-governmental sources, such as regulators, to understand how a crisis is being perceived by high influence stakeholders, then take appropriate action.

Different types of crisis management

Freshwater will help you adopt the right type of crisis management response, whatever the nature of your crisis. We have managed large and small crises, including those requiring multi-agency responses involving regulators and emergency services following:

  • Regulatory issues
  • Public health concerns
  • Fatalities
  • Security breaches
  • Major incidents including on transport networks
  • Accusations of misconduct or criminal charges
  • Product recalls
  • Financial irregularities
  • Fire and flood
John Underwood at a media training meeting.

Crisis management planning – how to be prepared

Not every crisis can be predicted. However, the organisations who are best able to recover have invested in crisis management planning before a crisis hits. You might fall foul of something outside of the scenarios you have planned for – but crucially, your response infrastructure will be in place if you have developed and tested a crisis communication plan.

We provide a range of services and training to help you to prepare for the worst, in order to respond at your best should a crisis hit. We work with clients to:

  • Prepare a crisis management plan
  • Develop a crisis communications manual
  • Provide crisis management training
  • Establish a crisis response team

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