‘Still very much open for business’: WPP’s Sorrell stands firm after IT outage
WPP remains open for business despite the company’s systems being crippled by the Petya malware over the past two day, boss Sir Martin Sorrell told staff in an internal memo overnight.
As of this morning, Australian time, the global sites are running with the company’s spokespeople saying the priority is to return to normal operations.
Sorrell’s internal memo, which was originally reported by Campaign.co.uk, said: “Many of you will have experienced significant disruption to your work. However, contrary to some press reports, WPP and its companies are still very much open for business.
An embarrassing state of affairs and an exercise in how not to approach crisis management.
Why direct staff to a public channel like Twitter for further updates ? It suggests WPP lacks basic DR planning & systems if they have no other channel in which to reach staff.
Here’s a tip, your HR system has the option for emergency contacts. Add every employee’s personal email addresses.
Why didn’t WPP send text messages to every employees mobile phones advising them of the situation instead of having CEO’s send panicked emails ?
If you must use Twitter (which presumably was a last resort), at least inform staff not to tweet or discuss the situation publicly as it unfolds. Looking at the hashtag and responses to @WPP everyone seemed to think it was a bit of a joke.
For a communications business, this is exactly how you don’t do it.
If I was a client I’d demand reassurances of basic DR plans.
If I was a shareholder, I’d demand answers from the WPP Risk Committee.
I work in a WPP agency.
We did receive text messages. A bunch of them actually over two days.
We also received updates both from HQ and our local IT departments.
Even though the update was ‘no update, we were always kept in the loop.
I also work in a WPP company and we have been getting plenty of text updates, private what’s app communication and constant phone calls so perhaps you would be best to save your opinion for a situation you had actually been privy to. Oh and I didn’t see any CEO send panicked emails as you have suggested.