Are the Biggest Threats to Your Organization’s Reputation Languishing in HR’s Bottom Drawer?
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications As we have seen countless times during these COVID-stricken months, employees are working on a short fuse. Isolation, stress and a galvanized political landscape have combined to create an environment where casual comments on social media explode into wars of words, workplace rules spawn walkouts, and long-simmering resentments about past […]
“Woke-Washing” Your Company Won’t Cut It
By Erin Dowell and Marlette Jackson, writing in the Harvard Business Review: Kelli, a data scientist at a tech company, recently submitted a request for a promotion. Her responsibilities had increased after turnover on her team and she felt the extra work merited recognition. But she was told that the VP who needed to […]
McDonalds Does Crisis Management the Right Way
By David E. Johnson, writing in CommPro: McDonalds stands out for handling its latest crisis with former CEO Steve Easterbrook right. The fast food giant let Easterbrook go last year after discovering that he had had a consensual relationship with an employee. When McDonalds terminated Easterbrook last year it said it had evidence of only of a non-physical, consensual […]
Corporations Must Look to Adopt a New Paradigm
From Bill Ide, III, Partner, Corporate Governance, Akerman and Richard Levick, Esq., Chairman & CEO, LEVICK Late one night during the financial crisis of 2008–2009, when working around the clock was the order of the day in the AIG war room, a team member left the building to grab takeout for dinner. Having forgotten to remove his […]
Creating a Post-Pandemic Crisis Team
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications Pre-COVID, few of our clients had ever experienced a crisis event with the potential to threaten the very existence of their organization. Now, almost everyone we talk to has had first-hand experience managing disruptions in supplies, sales, finance, staffing, production, logistics, communications, marketing and technology. Some organizations have emerged stronger […]
Food Brands Tweet #BlackLivesMatter, but What’s Behind the Words?
We remind our clients that apologies must be real, honest and authentic. We remind our clients that “spinning” is “lying.” And we remind our clients that if you’re going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. From this week’s New York Times, an insightful piece by Tejal Rao… It (seems) that, to […]
Women Ask for Coffee, Men Tend to Call in Favors: Why Pandemic Networking is Even Harder for Women
Carol Kitchener writes: The first step to making a new professional connection can be a little awkward. Usually, you start by reaching out over email. You might agonize over the acceptable number of exclamation points — or double check the spelling of several words you have certainly spelled successfully many times before. You read the email at […]
Crisis Communication: 5 Steps for Damage Control
By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications, writing for The Wisconsin Lawyer: Attorney Andy Phillips, like many folks, looks back a bit wistfully at the “good old days.” “I wish it was back in the day where I could go home at 6 o’clock and sit down with the paper for a half hour,” says Phillips, whose […]
Making Customers, Clients, Patients & Diners Wear Face Masks
First, they said don’t wear masks. Then they said it was OK to wear masks. And now they’re telling us we must wear masks. In what felt like a matter of days, mask-wearing went from horribly selfish to ethically and in many cases legally obligatory. For many of our readers, there’s now a new problem […]
How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence
From the Harvard Business Review: Women make up more than half of the labor force in the United States and earn almost 60 percent of advanced degrees, yet they bring home less pay and fill fewer seats in the C-suite than men, particularly in male-dominated professions like finance and technology. This gender gap is due […]