Balanced Family Academy provides individualized childcare and preschool for ages six weeks through Kindergarten. They help families lead healthy, balanced lives so they have time for what matters most.

SUCCESS STORY

How a local Ohio daycare center went above and beyond to prepare its 50-person team for communicating and managing potential crisis events.

The opportunity

Balanced Family Academy has earned strong reputation in the Columbus market for not only nurturing the health and education of children, but helping the whole family lead healthy, balanced lives. Serving children as young as six weeks through Kindergarten, the leadership team of the multi-location daycare center understood that, despite their staff’s most diligent efforts, an unexpected crisis could strike in an instant. In order to protect the children they serve and maintain their positive reputation, Balanced Family Academy turned to Approach Marketing to develop a multi-faceted crisis communication plan for the team.

The approach

Approach worked in alignment with the Balanced Family Academy leadership team and key stakeholders to investigate the likelihood and magnitude of potential events the centers may face. In other words, we took a good, hard look at everything that could possibly go wrong. Once we determined the possible crisis scenarios, we developed clear communications strategies tailored for managing each situation. At the conclusion of our research phase, we presented a detailed plan to ensure accurate information would be provided to both Balanced Family Academy families, followers and the public. The plan included possible crisis scenarios and next steps, communication roles and responsibilities, as well as instructions for properly managing social media channels and handling media inquiries.

The impact

With the crisis communication plan in hand, we gathered the entire Balanced Family Academy team of nearly 50 staffers for an in-depth crisis training to walk them through the plan step-by-step, outline individual roles, answer questions and execute a mock crisis simulation to practice roles and steps to take in the event of a crisis. While we certainly hope they never need to execute their crisis communication plan, we know the team is more secure knowing they can confidently care for their children and communicate with families in the midst of a critical situation.