GETTING BACK TO WORK – RISK MANAGEMENT AND CORONAVIRUS

One Year After the World Shut Down, Where Are We Now?

Who could have predicted that Dec. 31, 2019 would be the start of such a long and unpredictable journey? Who could have predicted that the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, would report a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Hubei Province, which would lead to a global pandemic?

How to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine

For a world desperate to return to some semblance of normality, the development in record time of a vaccine to fight the coronavirus pandemic was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

With Return to Offices Still Uncertain, Big Law Shifts From When to How

Changing office layouts, making hallways one-way, requiring masks, disinfecting the fridge, agonizing over whether to keep the communal coffee machine running: When it comes to Big Law’s eventual return to the office, nearly everything is on the table.

Getting Back to Work in the Coronavirus World: What Is the New ‘Business as Usual’?

As of April 2020, coronavirus is this year’s leading cause of death in the United States. At the same time, many of us rightly fear the damage being done to the economy and the financial health of individual businesses and families as the stay-at-home orders continue. What will happen if business and life resume too quickly? What do companies need to do to safeguard employees and their families? Here are resources, qualified information, and a back-to-work checklist.

Temperature Checks and Health Testing in the Coronavirus World

To protect American workers, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on April 17, 2020, issued new guidance on the potential application of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The EEOC says, generally, that businesses probably can continue taking precautions, such as checking an employee’s temperature and asking whether an employee is experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms, before allowing employees to enter the workplace.

PUBLIC RELATIONS, CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA RELATIONS DURING A PANDEMIC

Building Individual and Collective Resilience with Lesley Pate Marlin, Associate General Counsel at FINRA

Ready to Publish a Book? Hear how from Naren Aryal of Amplify Publishing Group

Trends Impacting Integrated Marketing Strategy in 2022

Author Brian Cuban Talks About The Addicted Lawyer and the Addiction Crisis Among Lawyers

Business Development, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Legal Marketing & PR, Media Relations, Law Practice Management

Bloomberg Tax Journalist Kelly Phillips Erb, aka @Taxgirl, Talks Media Relations, Diversity and How Taxes are Fun

The Reins of Power: How Immigration Law Has Evolved to Reflect Our Countries’ Value System

Navigating ALM Content and Putting It to Use for Lawyers and Legal Marketers with Vanessa Blum, Newsroom Innovation Director

Networking During Covid

Keeping up with your business network or meeting others with whom you could do business is more difficult during a pandemic, but much more important now than it has ever been. Lock-downs, working from home, and social distancing have caught those trying to do business development stuck behind a computer screen or perusing LinkedIn, not necessarily knowing what to do.

Transfer of Power: Everything You Didn’t Know About Presidential Transitions with Dr. Terry Sullivan Executive Director of the White House Transition Project

Leading Through Conflict and Crisis

2020 has given its fair share of conflicts and crises. Since January, the COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest, natural disasters, and presidential election have forced business leaders to pivot into often-unknown territory: accepting vulnerability and embracing resilience to successfully manage their teams.

A Candid Conversation Regarding Coronavirus, College Campuses, and Communications

Media Relations During a Pandemic

With Coronavirus setting the media’s agenda for the foreseeable future, Furia Rubel’s Caitlan McCafferty digs deeper into how the media industry has been affected by the crisis.

Is Your Organization’s Crisis Plan Ready for a Real Crisis: Podcast Featuring Gina Rubel

How to Handle Coronavirus in the Newsroom

The Philadelphia Public Relations Association (PPRA) moved its “Segment Producers: How to Pitch Them, What Content They Want and More” program from a live event to a webinar amid novel coronavirus concerns.

How Best to Work with Legal Media Including During The Coronavirus Pandemic with Gina Passarella, ALM Media

The Vocabulary of Crisis: How COVID-19 Has Changed Our Language

The pandemic of COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus that is sweeping the globe has changed our lives dramatically. While hospitals across the country and around the world doggedly try to save lives, entire companies are being run from their employees’ homes, school children and college students are trying to take courses online, and essential workers are keeping the grocery stores and healthcare services going.

COVID-19 Crisis Communications for Law Firms Webinar Hosted by LMA

Panelists discussed strategic and tactical best practices to help law firms manage COVID-19 crisis communications, including communications planning for clients, media, and internal teams/employees, among many other pressing crisis communications concerns unfolding within law firms right now.

Trust, but Verify Info Sources in a Pandemic

This guiding principle is more important than ever in the midst of a public health crisis. While the world is entranced by the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic and all of its ramifications, people are searching for, and sharing, a huge amount of information.

Is Your Crisis Communication Plan Ready to Handle a Pandemic with Crisis Plan Checklist 

One benefit of having or creating a crisis plan to deal with a pandemic is you then have it to reference for other crises. You can revise the core crisis plan to address other scenarios such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, actions by disgruntled employees, and #MeToo-related situations. In 2019, I noted that public relations professionals have been identifying a significant spike in the need for crisis communication plans across all industries.

Evaluate Your Online Reputation and Reviews While Physically Distancing

During the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, and the disease it causes, COVID-19, we at Furia Rubel have been working hard to provide our readers with helpful information about communicating during a time of crisis as well as productivity tips for your company’s marketing and public relations efforts.

Assessing Public Relations, Social Media and Marketing During a Pandemic

One client was launching a new website. Another had made a major lateral hire that they were poised to announce. A third was about to print a publication in which they had invested months of effort. What were they supposed to do, they asked us, in the midst of the first global disease pandemic in our lifetimes?

15 Tips for Adjusting Your Social Media Strategy During COVID-19

As most of the country remains under a stay-at-home order, social media is surging. Some business owners may be tempted to put their marketing and social media on pause, but businesses need to remain engaged and agile in responding to the changing landscape of increased usage and new consumer needs.

MANAGING YOUR BUSINESS THROUGH A PANDEMIC

Coaching for Lawyers with Whittney Beard, Master Certified Coach at Volta Talent Strategies

Building an All-Star Team of Outside Counsel Law Firms with Bryon Koepke, General Counsel of Suburban Propane

Authenticity in Community Banking with Bernard Tynes of Penn Community Bank

Maximizing Opportunities in Virtual Event Planning with Susan DeLeva, Dentons

How an Am Law 200 Firm is Working Towards Solutions to 2020’s Challenges with Jeremy Sacks, Pro Bono Committee Chair of Stoel Rives

Leading a Law Firm Through A Global Crisis with Michelle Friends, Executive Director of Fairfield & Woods, P.C.

Keeping Your Company Organized While Working Remotely

Tackling project management during COVID-19, when, oftentimes, no plan has been in place, can seem challenging, but these tips will help your company stay organized and keep forging ahead in a remote work environment.

Business Essentials for Law Firm Success with Jordan Furlong

Mask-Wearing, Physical Distancing, and Handshaking; Handling Tricky Interactions as People Begin to Gather Again

In addition to changing our language palette, we must find ways to communicate our preferences or needs in a way that does not antagonize others. As we begin to return to offices and social settings, we must find ways to use positive language to avoid conflict.

Choosing Positive Language for Pandemic Communications

Words matter. Still, deliberately choosing positive language to communicate during a pandemic can take energy and awareness. With that in mind, here are words and phrases that have been used often throughout the pandemic, along with considerations and recommendations for alternatives, if warranted.

Air Travel and Tribulation in the ‘Now’ Normal

What will the future of air travel, both for business and for leisure, look like? No one knows for sure, of course, but the TSA already is implementing new changes that will be obvious to anyone who does travel by plane in upcoming months.

How to Differentiate Yourself and Your Law Firm as a Legal Marketer During a Pandemic with Heather Morse

10 Tips to Manage Through the Coronavirus Pandemic

For the greater part of 2020, most of our watercooler conversations have been about novel coronavirus, COVID-19, the 2020 presidential election, and the economy. As a crisis communications agency, we have been staying abreast of the latest information on coronavirus as we continue to counsel our clients, teammates, families and friends.

Paycheck Protection Program: What Business Owners Need to Know

As restaurants, hotels, retailers and gyms furlough or lay off workers in droves, the federal government has authorized one of the most far-reaching economic assistance packages in United States history.

How to Prepare for Coronavirus to Hit the Small Business Owner

Recent weeks have starkly demonstrated the need for every organization to have a crisis communications plan, but one area of planning often gets overlooked: succession planning.

7 Resources for Navigating Business Closures During a Pandemic

The new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has changed business and personal routines, raised questions and concerns, and opened people up to new ways of thinking and new technologies around the world.

Make Physical Distancing Time Productive for Your Business

As we enter an even more intense phase of social distancing (which I prefer to call physical distancing), which in Pennsylvania was ordered by Gov. Tom Wolf on March 19, 2020, many business leaders are learning to adjust to the new circumstances.

7 Tips for Hosting Virtual Meetings

In the first quarter of 2020, we have experienced an unprecedented change in how we communicate. For many, the preferred method of communication has been in-person. Then, in March 11, 2020, coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (W.H.O.).

Protecting Your Privacy and Data During Virtual Meetings

Like many Americans who’ve been ordered to stay at home until the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, you may have used Zoom, either to stay in touch with a group of friends, family, colleagues, or to conference call with co-workers.

Getting On Board: New Employee Communications During COVID

While much of COVID-19’s disruption has been out of our control, it’s more important than ever for businesses to harness human resource tools they can control to help their organizations communicate and thrive, especially when onboarding new hires.

CAREERS AND RECRUITING

Recruiting Lawyers and Other Professionals in the Age of Covid-19

Career Considerations for Lawyers During a Turbulent Market with David Lat

HIGHER EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITY RESOURCES

Maryville University released the Crisis Communication Tips for PR Professionals. This in-depth resource guide was created for crisis managers, PR professionals, and business communication communities.

This guide provides detailed insights and resources on the following topics:
– Defining Crisis Management
– Potential Crisis Situations
– Crisis Impact Risks
– Tips for Handling Crisis Communications
– Planning for a Crisis
– Crisis Communication Tips and Examples
– How to Write a Crisis Communications Plan
– The Power of Social Media in Crisis Communication

Other online resources by Maryville can be found at  https://online.maryville.edu/blog/crisis-communication-tips

MAINTAINING A POSITIVE ATTITUDE AND STAYING RESILIENT

Leading Through Crisis: Strategies for Communications, Management, and Cultivating Resilience

The recent Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) webinar on leading through crisis moderated by Gina Rubel provided actionable steps to manage, communicate, and maintain resilience.

25+ Ways to Maintain Positivity and Mental Health in Uncertain Times

We’ve compiled a list of tips and suggestions from our team and members throughout the legal community that we hope inspire you to commit to maintaining positivity and mental health during this time.

Resilience in Times of Crisis and Calm with Renee Branson, Certified Resilience Coach

8 Tips for Balancing Your Jobs as Remote Workers and Caregivers

You are not alone if you are struggling to find balance in your new home office. This post shares observations, tips, and tricks for finding balance in this uncertain situation.

6 Community Support Ideas for Emotional Health

It is widely known that there are many benefits to community service. In addition to learning new skills and making new friendships, volunteering is known to make people feel happier and healthier as well as fostering an increased sense of social responsibility.

How Much is Too Much News?

Are you getting news weary? Do you roll your eyes when you turn on the radio or television and find the news shows are still talking about the new coronavirus? But you hesitate to turn it off because you don’t want to miss anything, right?

Anxiety, Stress and Suicide: Maintaining Quality of Life During and After Pandemic 2020

I started this blog post a few weeks ago and decided it was to be about the top apps that can help people alleviate stress and anxiety during this coronavirus. Then I read an article about Lorna Breen.

How COVID-Inspired Children’s Book Covers Went Viral in the Pandemic with Stefanie Trilling

Using our Noggins’: How America is Using Creativity and Imagination in Times of COVID-19

It’s clear this is a precedent-setting time in history, filled with uncertainty, fear and sadness. It’s also a time when we are seeing what the American spirit is truly made of. We are strong, persistent and steadfast as a group. We also are exhibiting our collective creativity!

GENERATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON COVID-19

COVID-19: A Generation Z Perspective

The final moments of college seniors’ last semester abruptly ended as the COVID-19 pandemic slowly wreaked havoc in the U.S. At a university in North Carolina, seniors had just completed midterms. Now what?

A College Student’s Perspective on the Transition to Remote and online Learning During a Global Pandemic

The impact that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had on colleges and universities, both nationally and internationally, is immense and unprecedented. Hear one college senior’s perspective.

Working from Home: Tips and Observations from College Students and Recent Grads

What it meant to work and learn from home didn’t register with me until my first time logging onto a Zoom call for my Business Law class at Drexel University. I thought to myself, “This won’t last long.” Little did I know this would soon become my daily routine.

VOTING AND OTHER CHANGES DURING SOCIAL DISTANCING

Vote.

We are quickly approaching the day of the general election on Nov. 3, and your vote matters. We wanted to remind you to check your voter registration and learn about voting methods, and to share with you other ways to engage beyond casting your ballot.

Voting in a Time of Novel Coronavirus

The 2020 presidential primary had an unprecedented beginning, with the most women and people of color running for the Democratic Party nomination in our country’s history.

DRAFT MESSAGES — THE EARLY DAYS OF PANDEMIC

Coronavirus Draft Messages for Your Business – Office Closures (The Early Days of Pandemic)

For the last several weeks, our crisis communications team has been inundated with messages relating to coronavirus (COVID-19). As a resource to our readers, we have developed several draft messages for your business to use when dealing with coronavirus issues.