CRISIS MANAGEMENT | STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS | REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
Righting the Wrongs
When everything that can go wrong does, and it is the fault of an employee, organizations can hide, mitigate, and deflect blame—or try to do the right thing. When the consequences of one employee’s actions led to the death of an innocent person, an organization represented by our law firm client knew they wanted to take responsibility for their error, but they didn’t know the right way to do it. With everything on the line, they needed help to do all they could to right the wrong.
Connection Point partnered with our law firm client and the organization to develop a strategic approach to managing the crisis. Starting with a systematic review of the incident and the organization's policies and procedures, we identified areas for immediate improvement in the organization. At the same time, we developed and executed a strategic crisis communication plan and response to keep the victim's family, community, and media informed of everything the organization was doing to take responsibility for what happened and make changes to ensure it would never happen again.
Over several months, we worked hand in hand with all parties to manage the message, make substantial internal changes, and set them up to be better community partners in the future. Most importantly, we facilitated conversations between the organization and the victim's family to ensure the most important people in this tragedy were the most informed and involved.
As a result of our strategic engagement, the organization made fundamental changes to be better and started rebuilding trust in the community. The law firm estimated we saved their client millions of dollars in punitive damages. While none of this will ever make up for the loss of life, the organization is better prepared to be a trusted partner in the future, and the family received a bit of closure they unquestionably deserved.