Since the beginning of year 2020, the coronavirus virus, Covid-19, which first appeared in China at the end of year 2019, turned from an epidemic to a pandemic worldwide. This situation created an unprecedented health crisis, but also a very largely disrupted environment, due of course to the number of rapid and very large-scale infections, which forced governments and companies to take sound crisis management measures. In such a context, communication is considered to be of high importance for effective monitoring and implementation of all taken measures, with the aim of reducing the spread of the disease and ensuring survival activities. As for water and sanitation utilities, supplying drinking water and providing sanitation services continuously, is a huge challenge to overcome, since it’s important to be able to easily handle internal, external as well as institutional communication to provide customers and utilities’ staff with the right information , at the right time, via the best channel, when we all know that poor management of your communication can damage your company image, even for long term. How are the communication departments of water and sanitation utilities handling this situation? It’s to share these communication challenges and solutions as well as AfWA’s perspectives, through its experts’ network, is organizing a webinar in the form of a panel discussion on June 25, at 12:00 p.m. GMT.

Goals

The objective of this discussion is to allow panelists to share experiences of water and sanitation utilities in terms of communication management in case of emergency and crisis, as it is now in the COVID-19 pandemic context. What are the challenges and solutions to maintain a fair, relevant and permanent communication both internally and externally, to preserve the brand image of the company as well as the health of the workers and customers. It will also be question of understanding the lessons that can be drawn from this health crisis, in terms of communication. 

Expected results

At the end of the panel, participants will be able to assess the importance of crisis and emergency communication, as well as considered solutions to easily circulate the good information during the pandemic. The panelists will also learn from each other and better their communication actions.