Corporate Integrity, Reputation and Brand

Management

Panel Discussion Facilitator – Jason Disborough, Managing Director, Aon Global

©Copyright 2013 by the Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. All rights reserved.

Risk Forum 5 December 2013

Intercontinental Melbourne – The Rialto Hotel

Melbourne, Australia

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Panel Participants

Tina Symmans Chair, Williams Warn,

Director, Forsyth Barr

Gavin Jackman Executive Global Head

Corporate Affairs and Social

Responsibility,

Orica Limited

John R. Phelps

President, Risk and

Insurance Management

Society (RIMS)

Jason Disborough Managing Director, Global

Aon Risk Solutions

1. To provide insights into how organisations manage a

major crisis and what are the key learnings that can

be drawn from these scenarios

2. To provide a deeper exploration into Brand and

Reputational Risk and why it is important for

organisations to understand and manage this risk

accordingly

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Source: Aon Australasian Risk Management Survey 2013

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‘Don’t waste a good crisis’ Tina Symmans

©Copyright 2013 by the Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. All rights reserved.

Risk Forum 5 December 2013

Intercontinental Melbourne – The Rialto Hotel

Melbourne, Australia

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Telecom in 2008

• New Zealand's largest company by market cap

• 8500 people

• Significant legacy issues from fallout with the

government

• New Board, executive team, new CEO

• Reputation poor amongst all the stakeholders

• Engagement was poor and staff were disillusioned

• National government delivered UFB plan and another

industry restructure

• To win UFB Telecom had to rebuild reputation and win

trust-fast-mission critical

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•Explode myths

•(Re-)Build relationships

•Tell our story

•Help our people

•Drive change

We spent ¾ of our time picking up the pieces

The rest was proactive stakeholder

management to a plan

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Engagement score was up 10% The highest it had been for five years (April 2009)

Stakeholder relationships improving-glimmers of trust appearing

A new energy was emerging.....

•Launched new 3G „XT‟ network despite legal challenge from Vodafone

•Launched in half the time expected

•Telecom seen as the “good guys” – the challenger

•Bigger, better, faster, further

•Something to be really proud of

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Telecom‟s XT network failed catastrophically over 2 week period

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Monday 14 December, 2009

8 hours

Customers: South of Taupo

Impact: Voice, SMS, and mobile broadband

Wednesday 27 to Friday 29 January, 2010 2.5hrs

Customers: South of Taupo

Impact: Voice, SMS, and mobile broadband

Monday 15th February 2010

7hrs

Customers: South of Taupo

Impact: SMS

Duration: About 7 hours

Thursday 18th February 2010

11hours

Customers: New Plymouth and the Hutt Valley

Impact: Voice, SMS, and mobile broadband

Duration: Up to 11 hours (though significantly less in many cases)

Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 February 2010

8hrs

Customers: South of Taupo

Impact: Voice, SMS, and mobile broadband

Duration: Around 8 hours

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First we panicked!

• Ran around in circles

• Remained in business unit siloes structure

• Allowed wrong people to run crisis-no leadership, emotionally wedded to network and tech partner, no understanding NZ psyche

• Allowed disjointed communications to be issued

• Went into bunker mode and didn‟t communicate for 3hrs

• Issued proclamations about fix time and didn‟t deliver -forgot about our own people.

• Emotions ran high –people gutted and disbelieving-blame game started

• Had only one crisis team for first 24hrs so exhausted by day 2

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• Replaced crisis leader

• Removed all non essential non competent people despite seniority

• Threw normal hierarchy out the window

• Established Tier One and Tier 2 teams with shadow teams for 24hr cover

• Technology ops and Communications took precedent

• Moved all crisis teams to war room-no siloes or patch protection

• Centralised and prioritised all communications

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• Priorities were staff, key external stakeholders then media

• Resolved that technology failed but we would win awards for the way we handled the crisis

• All communication approved by one person

• Provided hourly updates-even when nothing new

• Told the truth-we didn‟t know what was wrong or how to fix it

• Fronted up - CEO fulltime on media and comms

• Fronted in the heart of the crisis to apologize

• Accepted criticism - allowed vulnerability to show-resisted blaming technology partner

• Involved key stakeholders in decision making

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• Quickly devised and announced compensation package

• Announced independent review and promised to share the results-worked with stakeholders on terms of reference etc

• Heads rolled

• Told our staff everything and included all 8500 (only 70 directly involved in the crisis)

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• CEO didn‟t run the crisis-but had accountability

• Ensured crisis leaders delegated authority

• Approved and „road tested‟ strategy

• Approved significant expenditure

• Twice daily calls to chairman

• Communicated updates to full Board

• Fronted all media

• Talked daily to all staff

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“Made me so proud to work here watching this video. To have such a GREAT management team, who are so upfront with not only customers but to us.” “Great to share some of the focus and activity around this across the business ... Big ups!” “This would have to be the best piece of company wide communication I have seen in all my years at Telecom - well done.” “Wow – this is an incredible step change from the past and living proof of the Telecom team living up to our values, well done! And a big thanks to the exec team for sharing this. This type of communication is what keeps us together as one :)” “Great video and insight into the behind the scenes hard work and co-ordination getting to grips with, and addressing the outage... well done team...”

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• Our people came back in to work help after seeing XT stories on the news – out of hours

• Cancelled their own leave

• Lower than forecast number of sick days during crisis

• Taking their own old network phones out to customers

• The XT crisis united our people

Our people were our heroes

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• Be prepared to substitute leaders

• Command and control centrally

• Create a war room-no room for siloes

• Fast decision better then none

• Tell the truth and often

• Seniority doesn‟t count

• Don‟t be afraid of looking vulnerable

• Look after you people-all of them

• Actions not just words

• Front up ,apologize and make good

• Own the crisis-set the agenda or others will

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• Practice practice –it really matters

• Crisis manual doesn‟t get read-make it simple

• Gut feel and judgment critical

• A good crisis can galvanize your people

• Watch the post crisis “come down”

• Calling it “over”-critical when and how

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Ernie Newman

“Telecom will long be remembered for the way they handled this crisis more than the technology failure.”

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• Well rehearsed for Christchurch earthquakes

• Kept critical communications infrastructure going throughout

• Deployed COWs to critical places –CCTV

• Distributed 10,000 analogue phones to people without power

• Relocated and looked after all our people –again they were heros

• Maintained 111 call centre throughout

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Tina Symmans Chair, Williams Warn,

Director, Forsyth Barr

Gavin Jackman Executive Global Head

Corporate Affairs and Social

Responsibility,

Orica Limited

John R. Phelps

President, Risk and

Insurance Management

Society (RIMS)

Jason Disborough Managing Director, Global

Aon Risk Solutions

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Tina Symmans Chair, Williams Warn,

Director, Forsyth Barr

Gavin Jackman Executive Global Head

Corporate Affairs and Social

Responsibility,

Orica Limited

John R. Phelps

President, Risk and

Insurance Management

Society (RIMS)

Jason Disborough Managing Director, Global

Aon Risk Solutions

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