How to take the stress out of returning to school in COVID times.

Hello and welcome to this episode of Speak PR. My name is Jim James. Now imagine if crisis communications was easy. Imagine if COVID-19 and your children going back to school was not causing you masses of stress. And imagine if your kids felt 100% confident about returning to school, being in a bubble, having fun with their friends and studying. And although they were surrounded by this Imminent threat. Actually, they felt that parents and their school were all completely in control. My view is that's possible. COVID-19 is just another crisis for us to manage, and on this podcast, I'm going to share ways that I've used with clients to manage crisis communications. And the key, it's all about preparation. On this podcast, I'm going to share with you over 25 years of experience of managing crisis communications for clients and give you a methodology that you can use for your organisation during COVID Crisis communications has really one very simple rule, and that is preparation. Preparation is the key for crisis management because during a crisis itself, the organisation and the individuals that run the organisation are probably going to be busy managing the crisis. They won't have time to sit back and think about and to author and prepare the content that's ready and necessary. Now, in my experience over 25 years of public relations, I've worked with a number of clients on crisis communications plans, and I'd like to share with you some of the procedures and outlines that you can use, but it's specifically because Many of us are parents, or some of you may actually be running education establishments. Then this podcast is really to give some guidance and some expertise, all with the aim of reducing anxiety for the parents, but also for the students, the children, but also for all the caregivers in the school, the people driving the school buses. The people working behind, for example, the canteen, the teachers themselves. There are a large number of stakeholders, and in our Speak PR programme, we talk about the 3 different audiences for any communications. We talk about the internal, the partners, and the external. And in this case, really, in schools and education, just as they are, for example, within companies, we're really talking to the internal and to the partners. The kids actually are the internal audience, and the rest of us— parents, teachers, drivers, canteen administrators— we're really partners with the children, getting them through this. Now, in the UK, there is a lot of communication back and forwards between the government and schools around the protocols they've got to adopt, but one of the Sort of stories and rumours circulating in the UK is about how parents will be fined if they don't send their children to school. Now, there are many frightened and anxious parents out there, especially those that have got children that might be vulnerable. So the question to answer is, how do we reassure all the different stakeholders as we go back to school? And this podcast, I'm going to share some of the tools that I've used with big companies to make them ready for a crisis. Now, COVID-19 is kind of a crisis that's happening, but we're managing. It's a crisis that has hit us all and has made us all change our lives. But now we're going back into the water, as it were. We need to be prepared. Prepared for what happens if there's another attack. So the, the key really to the crisis communications, whether it's about COVID or anything else happening, is about thinking through the scenarios and thinking about the scenarios and the potential outcomes. And as I always say to my clients, crisis communications is really about continuity management. Continuity is what we're all really looking forward to. So crisis communications isn't necessarily about trying to solve the crisis. It's about trying to ensure there's continuity of operations so that the crisis doesn't become fatal. And we can do that in a number of different ways. First of all, we need to decide who the stakeholders are. And I've mentioned before, we've got, for example, parents, we've got the people in school and involved in making sure that school happens, and we've got the pupils themselves. Now, a few sort of various rules, but as education is taking place both in school and sometimes now within these bubbles, one of the key issues with Crisis communications is about time. We need to have some protocols set up and some infrastructure set up that enables us to communicate within certain time frames. Now ideally, communication takes place within regular school hours as much as possible because that's when people are expecting that communication. But what's also good, of course, is to ensure that people understand When communication might be sent out, so for example, it's possible for a school to ensure that there would be a certain time of day when there will be an announcement that's an emergency. Now, when we lived in Beijing, the pollution levels would get so bad that sometimes the AQI, which is this air quality index. would go above 300. Now, if it was over 140, then people were not supposed to go to school. So what would happen is that the school set up a protocol that would say by 8 o'clock every morning, we would all get an announcement that school was cancelled or not. Now, the, the catchment area meant that people could get to school If they left home by 8 o'clock. So we'd all know that if at 8 o'clock we hadn't had an SMS from the school, that school was taking place. So setting a time daily, or in the morning, or at lunchtime, or in the evening, when there's an agreed announcement pattern. Now, this is important because it's reassuring. Now, One of the issues with a crisis is that people become less rational, that fear makes them take action or not take action. Sometimes there's paralysis. And a big part of crisis communication and continuity is to ensure that everybody continues to behave in a rational and calm way, because sometimes, as we've seen, for example, when there's a fire or a shooting, it's the panic that causes more damage than the actual problem itself. So once we've established a time of the day when everyone expects to receive some information, you can use broadcast software for that, for example, or you can use email, of course, for that. But mobile is really the best platform because everybody's got a mobile phone and they may not be on their, on their email. So communicating with everybody at the same time And having as well some coding as to the level of alerts. Now again, I'll come back to my experience in Beijing where we would have a bright red, we'd have an amber, we would have a yellow and a green and then a blue. So different AQI levels would have different colors. Now this is useful for people that weren't familiar with the numbers, but also for the children. Who didn't necessarily understand all the numbers, they could understand on the displays, for example, on the school website, what the likelihood was of a good or a bad air day. But also they could then understand whether or not they were going to do indoor sport or outdoor sport, if they were going to play with their friends or not, if they need to wear masks or not. Now there is a a concept in the UK called the Digital Resilience Framework, and this is a tool for organizations and policymakers to embed digital resilience into products and the education and the services. And I think this is a great toolkit and a great concept that organizations frankly can adopt as well, because the next part of continuity is how to continue to serve the clients, how to continue to give children education if school cannot take place in the same way. So what happens if there's an outbreak, and I believe currently it's 2 children in one class or in a bubble could lead to the shutdown of an entire school, for example. So how to tackle that? Well, if a school has a resilience framework, it already has some protocols about what happens next. Where do the children go to continue their studies? Is it online or is it in a separate microbubble? And then for the caregivers at school, do they know what is the phase 2 plan? But also for the parents, especially if, for example, parents have to then collect children from school or make arrangements for the children to go to second places to stay until work is finished. So again, this comes back to this scenario planning. Now, the Bradford local government instructions are written on a website, which is very helpful, and they have a sort of a set of instructions for schools which include a parent information kit And that information kit includes school operations, student activities, security and safety, facilities and services, parent resources and advice, school procedures and policies. So in other words, they're getting prepared for all of the eventualities that may happen. And what's key then is that everybody understands Across the whole value chain what these signals are, when they're going to receive their signals, and what action to take. So it— in the Second World War, when a siren went off to denote an air raid was taking place, everybody would go to the shelter and the shelter warden would be there. Everybody knew which shelter to go to, everyone knew where they were to stay in the shelter, And everyone was aware what was going to happen when the air raid was over and how they'd be informed. So we need to create some very simple, very loud, and very easy to understand an action sequence of events for people. And these then need to become part of our behaviour. And above all, the children who in this case, of course, we're all concerned about. Need to see that the parents are in control. The children need to see that the school is being run well and that their education isn't being compromised. And in this sense, the bigger picture of the coronavirus is our opportunity to demonstrate to the next generation how to manage in a crisis, how not to buckle, how not to go silent, how to not descend into chaos. By having some plans. Now, I'm going to just share with you. My daughters go to a school here called the Royal High, and it's a member of the Girls' Day School Trust in the UK that runs 25 schools. So they have, of course, some resources. Going on to their website, they have first of all a pop-up, and it says, "Our students' safety is our top priority. We're confident in the safety measures we've put in place, and we're looking forward to welcoming the girls back in September." And on the homepage, in other words, I don't have to go very far at all. They have two brochures which are published on Issue, which I've talked about in an earlier podcast. That's ISSU, and these are online magazines. And in these magazines, they have shown the risk assessment and how the children will go to school, how they'll disassemble from disembark from their transport. Which coloured areas they're going to go into, the timetables where different children will be going to different classrooms at different times, how they're going to handle, for example, the normality of sport, and how they're then also going to be proactive in teaching the children about personal hygiene, for example. What I also liked about this site was then it linked to the UK government site, which has a a guidance for full opening of schools link. My sister's actually a headteacher at a school in London, and she was saying over the weekend that these guidance documents can be literally hundreds of pages long. So there's a huge amount of content and consideration going into caring for our children, but the school's job as well is to ensure that the parents understand and are reassured about these policies. Now, the American School in Singapore, where I was living for 12 years and still keep an office for EastWest PR, has actually helpfully created a website with their best practice from their experiences. And I think this is going to be a, a really nice outcome of the COVID-19, is that the education sector is sharing best practice. And in the American School of Singapore, they really talk about the need for preparedness. They talk about really the, the need for a resilience framework, for a communications protocol, and above all, to reassure the children that the school and the parents and all the people that are involved in ensuring that they're safe and well, have composure, and understand what to do when the situation escalates from a green to a blue to a red. So this podcast is about public relations, but as we all go back to school and we go and help our children go back to school, I think that it's an important topic to cover because without a sense of peace of mind, none of the children will be happy, but also none of the community in which the children live will be happy. And it will mean that ultimately we can't get on with our own jobs because we are having to continue to rescue situations, and that is disruptive. So crisis communications is all about preparation. There is really no excuse now for COVID to be considered to be a crisis. COVID isn't a crisis anymore. It's a situation for us to all deal with. In one of the articles and one of the webinars I gave earlier in the year, I talked about COVID the COVID mindset. And I explained that in my view, all PR in COVID times should be compassionate, optimistic, values-based, informative, and digital. Public relations for schools and for all of the higher education, I believe, should have a COVID lens now. And ultimately, public relations is about communicating how an organization is managing situations to all of its stakeholders. And this is probably one of the most complex and most universal communications campaigns taking place. All of us communicating across generations and across cultures and across geographies, how we're going to manage healthcare. And at the heart of that is probably one of the most important customer groups in the world, and that is the next generation. I think we can do this. I know we can. COVID is just another situation for us to prepare for, sort out the messaging, decide who needs to say what and where, and to give enough clues and enough strict and clear guidance that's unambiguous to all those people that need to change their plans at short notice. And with that, Going back to school doesn't have to be stressful. It doesn't have to be unpleasant. But more importantly, going back to school can be permanent. I hope this is useful for your school, for your organization. If I can share this in a personal way, happy to do so. Feel free to reach out to me at jim@eastwestpr.com or come to our website, which is eastwestpr.com. So in the meantime, until you may listen to another episode of this podcast, I wish you the best of health, that your children return back to school and are happy, and that you are feeling relaxed and confident that you can tackle any issues that may seem like a crisis, but because you're prepared, they will just seem like part of a normal daily life.