No organisation, however diligent, is immune from crisis.

 Your organisation should be prepared for the day that its reputation is put at risk. Every person in an organisation needs to know what to do, who to inform, how to behave and who is in charge in the event of a crisis.

1 +

Years Experience

100 +

Hands-on Crises Managed

1 +

Crisis Management Teams
Established and Trained

What we do

Be prepared for a crisis.

Know what to say during a crisis.

Test your organisation’s crisis readiness.

Sectors and Crises

We advocate a long-term partnership approach, with many clients now entering a second decade of benefiting from the invaluable expertise Hard Rain provides, for a multitude of crisis types across a variety of sectors.

Sectors

Crises

About us

We protect your organisation and its reputation.

Hard Rain is a dedicated independent crisis management and communications consultancy. We are trusted confidantes, advisors and strategists to high-level senior management supporting organisations to prepare for, and confront, any crisis or organisational issue.

Crisis shapes your future reputation. After all, no organisation, however diligent, is immune from change, crisis or scrutiny. We have a calm, confident, no-nonsense approach. And in the turmoil and confusion of a crisis, we help you to make clear-sighted decisions to protect the existence and reputation of your organisation.

What our Clients say

Are you prepared?

The most valuable asset of your organisation is its reputation.

Services

Crisis Management

Hard Rain instils a culture where crisis is respected and managed, not feared and ignored. Respecting and managing crisis comes from learning about crisis issues, studying other organisations that have confronted crises successfully or otherwise, as well as generally immersing your leadership team in the subject over a short intense period.

Crisis Management covers the ‘what you do’ when things go wrong. Hard Rain delivers Crisis Management plans and training that make your organisation ‘crisis ready’. This means everyone knows what to do in a crisis, and the appointed Crisis Management Team (CMT) is a skilled, tried and tested group of people that can best defend the organisation. They are equipped to confront any issues or problems cautiously and systematically with confidence.

Being crisis ready means preparing and training your organisation before a
problem arises. Irrespective of complexity, size, location or niche, we
apply best practice and principles on a bespoke basis to ensure your
organisation is crisis ready. Whether that’s reviewing existing Crisis
Plans, Risk Registers and Business Continuity Plans or creating these
with your senior managers, we build an individual programme tailored to
your needs.

For organisations new to Crisis Management or
contingency planning, you will be taken through a process designed to
identify and prioritise the likely risks and unlikely events that could
befall your organisation prior to building your Crisis Management plan.

During a crisis, we roll our sleeves up and
work tirelessly with the Senior Management and CMT to tackle the crisis
head-on by establishing a strategy and working on a resolution. We’re
often best placed to handle all incoming media to establish a
picture of the demand and pressures on the organisation. With Hard Rain
sitting at the heart of managing the problem, and taking responsibility
for the media, you’re able to focus on the investigation and resolve the
issues in play.

Crisis Communications

“Saying or doing the wrong thing during a crisis can seriously damage the reputation of your organisation.”

Crisis Communication is all about ‘what you say’, when and to whom. It’s a learned skill and your organisation’s crisis response needs good communicators supported by a crisis ready communications team.

How you communicate during a crisis influences how interested parties perceive your organisation, as well as the crisis itself. Therefore, the use of effective crisis communications is paramount to managing a crisis successfully.

Through crisis communication training, for both CMTs and in-house communication professionals, we instil a tactical and strategic approach to communication and prepare individuals for the pressure that comes with being a spokesperson during a crisis.

The training takes you through what it’s like to be the centre of all that attention. When you don’t have answers to the questions the world is demanding answers to. And, when everything you say is being dissected for meaning and nuance. We cover these elements and more to pass on our invaluable experience in communicating during a crisis.  

Crisis Training

Hard Rain believes that the investment in time for training is essential and that Crisis Preparedness is not good enough without appropriate readiness. All training is underpinned by best practice from around the world, and uses examples that are both well-well-known and, where possible, relevant to the organisation.

Following the formation of your organisation’s Crisis Management Team (CMT), they need to be trained to become a functioning, well-practiced team. The training completed with Hard Rain, establishes and embeds crisis protocols into the team that are also clearly communicated to everyone in your organisation. Initial training usually involves desktop and classroom-based scenarios before leading on to in-depth testing of the system, although all training is bespoke and dependent on the unique needs of your organisation.

Experiential simulations and ‘live events’ take the CMT training to the next level and test whether the system in place works. These crisis simulations are very motivating and empowering for the team, as they help to build confidence in the plans and protocols in place, along with the capabilities of the team.

By developing and instilling clear protocols in the CMT, and ensuring its members are properly challenged, trained and tested, we create a tight knit team, with a variety of skill sets and expertise, that is confident, prepared and crisis ready.

The Hard Rain approach

We believe in honesty, transparency, consistency and accountability.

Hard Rain is relentless in its approach to crises. With a lifetime of experience, we support our clients to demonstrate crisis readiness through our crisis management, communications and training provisions.

We advocate a long-term partnership approach, with many clients now entering a second decade of benefiting from the invaluable expertise Hard Rain provides. 

Case Studies

Case Studies

A trusted manager known to our client for some 20 years found the media on the doorstep of their London premises.

An educational institution client planned to sell some surplus land to a putative purchaser looking to convert the land into a serious service operation for its transport fleet.

Hard Rain assisted two separate clients during the horse meat crisis in 2013.

Identifying issues and managing them is fundamental in reducing the likelihood of a crisis occurring in the first place.

A 'bad day at the office' can't get much worse for business leaders than the loss of an employee's life within their organisation.

Product mis-labelling during the manufacturing process of a Hard Rain client, resulted in the deaths of thoroughbred horses.

Hard Rain works discreetly for a number of high-profile independent schools across a variety of scenarios.

Hard Rain client, Securitas, was robbed of £53m at its Tonbridge Depot.