Training and Skills Development in Stakeholder Relations

We work closely with our clients to develop staff training and development programmes that help them identify, classify and work with stakeholders to meet their specific requirements in both local and global markets.

Our experience

At Baird’s CMC we regard staff training and continuous professional development not simply as commercially important. It is a core corporate responsibility and a critical aspect of good governance and reputation management. Baird’s CMC associates have conducted multiple external relations and media training courses for clients including the Government of Botswana, Eli Lilly, the Guttmacher Institute, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, the Government of Mauritius, PATH and Sanofi.

We help clients to use social media effectively and to use direct contact techniques to engage with their stakeholders and gauge their thoughts. We also help clients with alliance building measures that help organisations strengthen their relationships with existing stakeholders.

We have created a series of communications and management training modules that help clients deal with concerns their stakeholders may have. These can be modified as per service area ranging from crisis communications, internal communications to perception management.

What we’ve done

Baird’s CMC were part of developing the curriculum on stakeholder mapping and management for the Eli Lilly University, an internal development programme for European executives. We worked closely on formulating a curriculum that included identifying different kinds of external stakeholders, working with activists, recruiting allies for crisis management and working with patient groups to inform policymakers. We also helped deliver pre-course reading, leave behind materials and intranet resources. We helped deliver the programme multiple times for staff throughout the Europe and Middle East region
Due to regulatory and other issues, a major producer was not be able to supply all of the medical products it was contracted to supply to some clients. Baird’s CMC assisted the manufacturer in formulating a crisis communications plan to deal with possible negative media attention including:
- A clear and comprehensive crisis response kit for GMs to make sure that the same answers are given wherever the question is asked
- Training for GMs in working with different kinds of stakeholders in civil society, pollit
- Fast turnaround media monitoring in key countries to allow daily assessment of trends
- Comprehensive media training for spokespeople with lots of opportunities for practise
- Responding fast and well to any media enquiries with information that is easy to access, easy to use and answers any reasonable question
- Enlisting and briefing third-party manufacturing experts who would be available to lead media interviews and discussions back to the inherent problems of manufacturing the medical product and managing multiple regulatory demands
A leading international foundation was the lead partner in providing technical support to the Government of India (GoI) and 15 states for the planning and implementation of the Japanese Encephalitis (JE) vaccination program. Between 2006 – 2009 almost 60 million children were immunised with the JE vaccine, manufactured in Chengdu Institute of Biological Products, China. Media reporting of JE had often highlighted the real risks but had sometimes also created unnecessary public anxiety. Added to this, most media reporting of the imported Chinese vaccine had been unhelpful; much of it was inaccurate; some was probably tainted by domestic commercial interests. In response, Baird’s CMC helped develop a crisis communications plan that focused on managing communications with the media and with all relevant target groups. Baird’s CMC delivered crisis communications support to the vaccination program through a wide range of activities that included:
- Identifying the priorities, concerns, experience and needs of the JE crisis communications plan, in cooperation with GoI health workers, state health departments and those medical professionals implementing the JE vaccination programme
- Drafting the crisis communications plan and incorporating input from all participating stakeholder
- Devising communications crisis media training programme to support the crisis communications plan
- Implementing crisis communications training programme in Mumbai, Lucknow and Delhi with key health care workers
- Developing a suite of communications tools to support managers and other health care workers in the management of a crisis situation should it arise including : web site; Q&A documents; backgrounders for media; key contact lists and other resources.