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First there was Harvey Weinstein. We were horrified, but we’d seen things play out like this occasionally before, like with Bill Cosby or Clarence Thomas.
But then there was Kevin Spacey. And Jeffrey Tambor, Louis CK, US Senator Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor, Aziz Ansari…
By any measure, the conversation that started in October of 2017 is far from over. It’s not even at its peak. Al Franken lost his job. HBO cancelled Louis CK’s shows, and Amazon Studios is going to have to find a replacement for its biggest star. #MeToo has held so many to account for their actions past and present that risk managers in any industry are right to be worried.
“I really don’t believe in hyperbole,” says Thomas Fladung, vice president of Hennes Communications, “but there’s something going on here with this subject. Clearly, we’re going through a cultural shift, and this is enduring. This is not some fad or trend.”
Sexual harassment is no longer a reputational concern just for large, high-profile organisations. Fladung’s firm does business all around the world, but he reports that these days, small organisations with reaches no further than the state of Ohio (where his company is based) are concerned about their preparedness. “People are feeling it at every level,” says Fladung. “I’m certainly seeing it on a local level. I’ve talked to other people outside of my firm about this to see if they’re feeling it, too, and it shows no signs of slowing down.”
While #MeToo may have originated in the entertainment industry, it won’t live to die there. “2018 is going to be the year where the #MeToo movement hits corporate America,” says David Oates, president of Stalwart Communications. “This will be the year CEOs will start going down, and that’s going to be a longer storyline than with celebrities because there are more for-profit businesses than actors, actresses, and producers.”
Is your risk management department prepared?
Issues surrounding sexual harassment are sensitive in nature, but the communications tools used to navigate them are often not so different from the ones used to manage most other reputational crises. For Fladung, in the immediate aftermath of an allegation, the classic crisis communications fundamentals apply:
Tell the truth, tell it first, tell it all, and tell it fast.
If the organisation in question has a crisis management plan in place, risk managers kickstart the process and mitigation efforts unfold systematically. At its core, a good plan identifies who is tasked with handling the crisis, what their roles are, who they’re reporting to, and who is reporting to them.
When companies don’t have a crisis management plan, that’s when things get tricky for the risk manager. “Almost all companies have emergency operations plans for if the lights go out or a natural disaster hits, but we’ve found that relatively few [companies] have crisis communications plans,” says Fladung. “If they don’t, then a risk manager is probably going to be put in a position where they help determine how to respond to the crisis. They may be trained for that, they may not.”
Risk managers are masters at handling physical manifestations of crisis, but with issues of sexual harassment, it’s essential that communication is a major part of mitigation strategy. “If you’re working with an organisation that doesn’t have a laid-out communications plan, then you need to scramble and establish at the very least some sort of approach to communications,” says Fladung. “Line up the people who are going to do it and determine who those audiences are that you most need to speak to.”
Yet there are some rules of crisis communications response that apply uniquely to sexual harassment allegations. The critical point to always remember is not to blame the victim.
Take these cases, for example:
In mid-January, five women accused James Franco of sexually inappropriate or exploitative behaviour. The actor responded by saying, “I will hold back things that I could say because I believe in [the cause] that much that I have to take a knock… I’m not going to try to actively refute things… because I believe in it that much.”
It may sound sincere at first, but the implicit message is clear. “It was a backhanded slap against accusers,” says Oates. “He publicly discounted and attacked his accusers. While Franco’s approach –whether intended or not – may not sound so much like a direct counter-attack, most of America saw it in its proper, back-handed, passive-aggressive light.”
Discrediting an accuser is the one thing that you never want to do when responding to a sexual harassment allegation, says Oates, even if the accuser is a “bold-faced liar.” He says, “If you discredit the accuser, you make it look like you have something to hide.”
That also goes for bringing up elements of an accuser’s past in order to paint them as untrustworthy or insincere. “Even if those things are true, there’s no benefit in [bringing them up], because then you’re looked upon as getting into the mud,” says Oates. “And if you’re willing to get into the mud, then you are classified as somebody who – even if you didn’t do it this time – could possibly do things that are nefarious, like committing acts of sexual harassment.”
Instead, take the high road.
An example of someone who did that very well is Star Trek actor and LGBT icon George Takei. He faced a sexual harassment accusation not long before Franco. His response? Empathic.
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“What he basically said is, ‘Look, that’s not how I saw it, but the very fact of the accusation will have me stop, pause, and think,’” says Oates. “He emphatically refuted the accusations of the individual, but he showed empathy to the accuser and for anyone who would be the victim of something like that.”
The media buzz surrounding Takei, according to Oates, lasted half a news cycle. For Franco, it lasted days. “It’s because of the manner with which Takei responded to it,” he says. “It was very compelling.”
