Hill & Knowlton Connected Conversation: Pandemic Communications

The inaugural episode of Hill & Knowlton Canada's bi-weekly podcast - Connected Conversation - features a conversation with Ilyse Smith, a senior vice president in H&K's Toronto office.

Having recently completed work on a pandemic communication manual for a large client, Ilyse looks at some of the principles underlying successful pandemic communication preparation...key among them remembering that the most important audiences in a pandemic for any company will be its employees and customers. Providing information, direction - and reassurance - to those audiences is a function of direct, un-intermediated communication: the media's attention, and its interest, will be elsewhere.

For organizations still putting together their pandemic communications, Ilyse suggests taking a look at the following web sites:

World Health Organization outbreak communications guidelines

A good general resource from government of Canada

Here is a good business continuity planning tool

Well-known academic Peter Sandman makes some suggestions here

From the Pan America Health Organization - a division of the WHO