Crisis Management Workshop

The resulting tasks, to be delivered over the remaining three days of the workshop, was split into two distinct areas of communication – internal and external.

• Internal communications were required to communicate the scale of the crisis to Will’s employees globally, instruct the efficient correction of artwork and packaging errors and contain the potential fall in employee morale and collaboration.
• External communications were required to respond to public feedback, formally communicate the crisis to the media and limit damage to brand reputation.

Structure and timescales

In order to make the event feel genuine, students were given multiple tasks to deliver over a period of two days. These tasks ranged in type from written press releases, to the production of videos to be broadcast to internal audiences.

The cohort of 50 students, from five universities (Leeds, Messina, Rome, Aarhus and Florence) were divided into equal groups with intentionally diverse nationalities in order to create an uneven distribution of English acquisition and cultural traits.

Deadlines came simultaneously and timescales grew shorter as the event progressed and students became more familiar with each other and the Will’s brand.

On the morning of the third day students were asked to present their ideas for repairing external reputational damage and rebuilding internal confidence, in a medium of their choosing. Here each team was given ten minutes to present their work, following a three-hour brainstorm session. This was to be the conclusion of the workshop and role-play was then ended.

Group discussion

The event was concluded with a recorded group discussion.

Students were asked to comment on their experiences, and how they felt about their colleagues and the tasks. It was revealed here that the event was in fact intended to create a situation where students could experience, perhaps for the first time, the emotions experienced in stressful situations in the workplace.

Intended outcomes

During the workshop, the tasks that were set and the unusual situation the students found themselves in were of secondary importance, designed to create the environment many will come to experience in their working lives.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we have little or no prior experience, working with strangers (sometimes of different nationalities) and with the expectation of a resolution within a defined timescale. It is exactly this situation that we intended to replicate in the workshop in order to explore the skills and emotions that are common under these circumstances.

It is here where emotional intelligence, empathy and good communication are critical skills – skills that are not generally taught within a learning environment. And it was through the fictional setting of the workshop that those skills could be explored.

Opportunities for development

The workshop used a theme of crisis management within a global food manufacturing context, and this could be replicated in much the same way in further workshops. The themes themselves could also be expanded, perhaps into other industries or settings.

More work should also be done to highlight a direct correlation between action or task and likely transversal skills brought into play – this was an unknown when designing the tasks, as different individuals respond differently under specific circumstances.

Finally, there may be an opportunity to develop the workshop for different age groups and indeed even a post-graduate or professional audience (as we did later, during the final conference in Rome).