As COVID-19 has continued to terrorise the world (especially here in Melbourne, where we’re back in stage 4 lockdown), many people have decided to postpone their training sessions until the pandemic has passed.
Well, ‘until the pandemic has passed’ looks like a time increasingly far away into the future and it seems ‘these times’ will be ‘the new normal’ for longer than we’d initially thought. Although most people are still working remotely (and some will be for quite some time), this doesn’t mean you should stop training ‘until further notice’. Au contraire, given the extreme volatility of the current climate you should be regularly training and testing your teams even more so than normal. How would your senior leader or spokesperson fare if they were suddenly thrust into a media interview straight to camera after having had no face-to-face human contact for the past six weeks (and definitely no media training for at least a year)? Will they be prepared to explain your company’s response to COVID-19 at short notice and how the government response and the economic fallout has impacted your industry?
Let’s face it, there’s a high probability it’ll happen now too – let’s not forget that companies are coming under increased scrutiny to demonstrate their position not just to COVID-19, but a multitude of other crises that have popped up simultaneously.
Training doesn’t necessarily mean needing to go back into the office – with Zoom meetings and teleconferences becoming a part of people’s daily lives, we can integrate this technology into running media training sessions remotely (after all, your laptop camera is still a camera!) Consider exercising your key communicators by hosting staff town halls and sharing video message updates.
We can help design, develop and deliver your media training for your leadership team and spokespeople with our online media training packages.
Call me on 0417 160 120 or email allan@crisisshield.com.au for a chat on how we can help prepare and protect your business to survive for better times ahead.