Given the sudden increase in the need for  employees to increasingly work from home and schools now exploring and developing remote learning options in the wake of the COVID-19 mitigation efforts, I wanted to offer Nicole Hudson , from Metro Detroit-based Inbound Lead Solutions and her crisis communications partner, Mark Gilman of Pitchnoise, as a resource for stories you are working on related to this trend.
Inbound Lead Solutions is now advising and developing plans, policies, communications, procedures, training, and fast technology selection and implementation as businesses, organizations, conferences, and schools prepare to shift to remote work in the short-term. Her firm consolidated this advisory and implementation work into a new standalone program called Remote Strategy to provide tools and resources to support organizations making and managing these decisions.

Nicole’s level of expertise and connections has led her to connect with various stakeholders on Gov. Whitmer’s Coronavirus Task Forces this week. She has also consulted on this topic with the Oakland County Schools, various school districts and unions in Macomb County and non-educational clients such as the Legal Marketing Association, local law firms, national franchise brands, and automotive OEMs. Nicole and her team have over 15 years of experience working remotely with more than 6 years together at their virtual agency and have a number of best practices to share with your readers/viewers/audience.

Mark Gilman has been advising customers on the massive amount of communication that needs to be shared with employees, vendors, board members and the community.  There has been a lot of misinformation shared across many types of industries and Gilman has specially spearheaded crisis management messaging and tactics for political candidates, law firms, non-profits, education and tech clients.  Mark has either halted or delayed much of the response of his clients due to rapidly changing elements in the crisis and business and political leaders speaking about issues in which they have little expertise.  In other words, seemingly many want to give medical advice based on what they’ve heard or read. Mark has advised his non-medical clients to stay clear of any information sharing medical direction but talk more about business tactics and support.

Here is how Nicole and Mark have been helping companies locally as they start up their remote work and crisis communications triage:

1) Making the decision to go remote and ensuring the infrastructure (technology, policies, and communications) are in place to inform and empower these organizations to make and scale this decision. Nicole and her team have been able to establish a direct line to the staff at Johns Hopkins and the CDC and additionally are using curated AI and data visualization tools to cull verified data regarding COVID-19 to help companies and organizations make better decisions. Nicole and her team have created a set of internal best practices and tools on how to shift to remote work, how they run their agency virtually, and advising other organizations - helping them audit and adjust their technology stack to meet their unexpected need to work from anywhere.

2) Many companies and schools are overloaded in how to get information to their staff and communicate knowledgeable policies and establish technology solutions that prepare their workforce for remote work or learning. They’re struggling to communicate the decision of going remote and developing messaging that is disseminated quickly and correctly and available in multiple platforms as well as being responsive to questions. One such example: an executive client needed to field a call and being asked to join a Zoom video call in 15 minutes (without knowing what Zoom is or having software setup) to speak to the board of directors, many of whom had questions about policies which hadn’t been established in short order.  

3) Organizations are starting to communicate decisions about their businesses remaining open and answering customer’s and employees’ questions via digital channels and social media. In effect, many companies are prepared to handle internal communications but are not equipped to handle real-time conversations to supply information on all digital platforms and have struggled with cohesive and targeted messaging developed uniquely for employees, vendors and customers.  This includes when business and events elevate to a level of crisis that requires a swift and concise response, especially in traditional and social media. Mark and Nicole’s teams are working together to rapidly create and execute communications and messaging plans and a digital presence as needed to fill the gaps where existing clients need them.

4) Technology issues are a part of the remote work life and require infrastructure in place to solve challenges from day to day. Nicole’s team has traveled to homes and offered technology troubleshooting to high ranking executives and employees regarding technology-related issues. They have scaled their support staff to meet the needs of their clients 24/7 who are running into unexpected technology support needs via remote channels.

Please let me know if you would like to set up a conversation with Nicole and Mark and they would be happy to accommodate your schedule to participate in interviews.