Communications leaders from Ireland and around the world probed topics such as responding to crises, Covid, industrial relations, and sustainability at the Public Relations Institute of Ireland (PRII) 2022 annual conference this week.
Taking place at DMG Media Ireland's SpaceTo studio, the two-day event was attended by 18 speakers on six subjects, three case studies and two panel discussions, with delegates watching online.
Dr Martina Byrne, CEO of the PRII, said the conference had been held after two years in which Covid and post-Covid recovery had been the main focus for communications professionals, and that there had been no period since 2019 when the industry hadn't had to "respond to unprecedented, complex issues".
Organisations are "trying to plan in advance what are the important communications messages that they want to get out there," Byrne said. "That's difficult enough to do in so-called normal times.
"Coming out of that intensive Covid response period, and you're into the disruption caused by, not least, climate change, demands from legislators, activists and consumers around sustainability, the war in Ukraine, the knock-on effect on energy prices, consumer sentiment being hit ... there's not let up really.
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"[These crises] are interaction and affecting each other, making some situations even worse than they might have been, so that's really where our heads were when we were planning this conference in terms of what do our members need to know ... and continue to do work and not be overwhelmed by everything that's going on."
On the first day of the conference, Dr Anne Gregory, professor emeritus of corporate communication at the University of Huddersfield, gave a keynote presentation on aligning public relations and C-suite objectives.
Issues, crisis and reputation advisor Ella Minty led a session on crisis and issues communications, in which she spoke of the importance of building trust with consumers and stakeholders in crisis communications.
Minty was followed by three case studies: one about how the HSE dealt with the cyber attack during Covid; another about DAA's handling the fallout as passengers queued for hours at Dublin Airport over the summer; and a third about Ukrainian activists to phone people in Russia and share information about the ongoing war.
The second day saw a panel discussion between former Irish Times industrial correspondent Martin Wall and Fórsa communications officer Niall Shanahan on the state of industrial relations communications, chaired by PRII vice-president and INTO assistant general secretary David Geary.
Byrne said industrial relations has fallen off the news agenda following the agreement of the various pay deals and widespread long-term partnerships between public sector bodies and unions.
"We are aware that industrial relations communications is increasingly important because we can see what is happening in other jurisdictions," Byrne said.
"We know there's a major impact on people's wages, concerns about jobs, disposable income, and we just wanted to mark people's cards that it is a very specialist area. It's got to be treated with respect because ... emotions run very high, and it requires a certain skillset."
The conference closed with a presentation from Leipzig University's Jana Brockhaus on how to manage digitalisation processes and build digital infrastructure in which she delved into communications technology and the importance of employee buy-in for its implementation to be successful.
"Organisations need to be asking, as they use more and more technology, have they considered the human element," Byrne said.
She concluded by saying that the event was great for bringing together the PRII's members and that interest in the subjects explored at the conference was high among attendees. This was the second year the PRII had used SpaceTo to host its annual conference.
Image: Dr Martina Byrne, PRII CEO, and Padraig McKeon, PRII president.
