12.10.2007 | Elke-Maria Rosenbusch

Vattenfall: new chances through improved commincations

In all large newspapers and many journals in Germany the Swedish energy corporation Vattenfall has currently inserted whole page ads with the headline “Vattenfall is there for your questions” and calls for a spoken or a written dialog. The chairman of the executive board of Vattenfall Europe, Hans-Jürgen-Cramer, writes: “The events of the last months have burdened the public confidence in Vattenfall. We have not informed you satisfactorily enough.”

From Vattenfall`s point of view by the end of June in the nuclear power plants Krümmel and Brunsbüttel nothing unusual happened. The power company did not rate the events as accidents. For many people in Germany, however, they were “felt accidents” and they sensed the situation as crises in technology, information, communication and confidence.

Questions and answers concerning the dialogue are currently provided on the website as a PDF-document on a regular basis. A successful campaign, as Vattenfall reports a vivid participation. People ask many questions and Vattenfall is ready to listen and to answer. Vattenfall obeys its public responsibility and employs the chances and possibilities of communication – though with multi-month delay.

Vattenfall CEO Lars G. Josefsson in July still contended that in no other country of the world an entirely not dangerous fire in a transformer house would have led to such a fundamental discussion. Referring to the incident in the Swedish nuclear power plant Forsmark of last year, that had been much more dramatic but nobody bothered.

A little later he stated given the scope of the crises: “Vattenfall Europe has not taken the peoples` fears seriously enough. That is the real problem.”

Now the catastrophe was discovered: luckily no technological one but one concerning communications - with far reaching consequences concerning reputation, image and looming loss of customers through a lack of trust.

It is not about pointing with the finger at the company that has made a mistake. Mistakes are not getting remedied by accusations but by solutions that are fitting and that are suitable.

This is about the relevance of crisis communications: companies are well advised to cultivate their ability of crisis communications in times of normal situations. This crisis communication is marked by he ability to detect a crisis early in time and provides a readily usable crisis plan that exactly prescribes what, when, by whom and how to deal with the crisis to keep the damage as small as possible for all involved. To initiate crisis communications after the start of the crisis is simply too late - not too late at all, though, as the Vattenfall dialogue campaign shows. Now confidence must be restored at a high price that originally should not have been lost.

Vattenfall is the Swedish word for waterfall: clear, transparent, fast and steady like a waterfall communications ought to be concerning sensitive issues in times of crises.
Necessary therefore is a stable crisis concept that is ready to use as soon as a crisis appears – these are moments of truth particularly for business communications.

It is of little use to ignore the cultural and political peculiarities of a single country. Even if people in Germany view nuclear power much more critical than in Scandinavia this is a fact a professional communications policy has to deal with. Successful intercultural communications takes into account the cultural differences and needs and doesn’t question them. Only a company that feels committed to the proper culture of a country is able to communicate and inform in due manner.

Particularly with an energy corporation whose business success relies on undamaged reputation, high reliability and a positive image, such grave omissions in communications prevail - the damage of the image of the company is huge and perpetual.
And customers have reacted: this was Josefsson´ s confession at ”Managementforum”, an event for executives from business, politics, culture and media, that the company had lost ten to one hundred thousand customers this year. He rightly attributes the substantial loss in customers connected to the grave communication mistakes.

Companies need a truth-oriented access to communications. A study of Hohenheim University ”Truthfulness - key to confidence” proves this. According to this only a quarter of the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany believe that companies inform their employees and the public really open-minded. Lies, cover-ups, manipulations and good weather communication seem to be the main killers of trust in companies.

For companies this erosion of trust should be alarming as trust and reliability of internal an external communications are fundamental cornerstones of their successful operations.

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