Work asking me to do something outside of my remit

[Grassisalwaysgreen]

I lead a PR team for a UK theme park. Currently emergency services liaison is handled by the operations team however they want to change it so it’s handled by me and my time. Aibu to think this is not on? And that if they want to add it to our remit then we need more resources? I’ve been here 15 years and liaising with the emergency services has always been the job of the operations team not my PR team

It’s weird to expect the PR team to liaise with the emergency services!!

YANBU I would be fuming! It’s nothing to do with PR, it’s a million miles away from anything that should be within a PR teams remit

They will try it on again and again these days ,happens to me all the time in my job pile on more and more work and responsibilities (for no extra salary either ) or even a thank you

I think they are thinking more about large ‘crisis’ situations. So for example, if we have a fire at the park, they think it would be better for the PR team to be the ones liaising with both the media the fire service. Of course that is just one example though. But I still don’t think it should be the remit of my team

This! They are not offering a pay increase

This was my first thought when it was raised in a meeting! It’s not my teams remit ffs

YABU it sounds like they are having to make cuts and justify why you are needed/paid the hours and number of staff in your department. They are trying to throw you a rope. Many years ago I worked in ents at a theme park and they had us doing all sorts like helping on rides, leafletting cars, etc, to keep our team in work after upper management had cut all the shows.

Look at it this way, what has happened to the people who used to do this? Have they, for example, cut them back to more seasonal contracts and fewer ops in the office over winter?

Surely a PR team should be part of this anyway? Look at, say, the incidents at Flambards this year or Alton Towers a few years ago. Your team should be part of the crisis management to ensure you and the emergency services are sending out the same correct messages. Flambards bodged it, as is to be expected. Alton Towers were much more on it as soon as it happened.

So whilst I wouldn't expect you to be the team liaising with the fire brigade at the scene of an incident - because that's clearly an operational role - I would absolutely expect you to be in immediate contact with the PR teams for all the respective emergency services.

I was emergency services for a long time and that is a very normal protocol in a place like a theme park.

Work out how much time it would take up. Then offer to do it but you'll need to stop doing X task (that takes same amount of time) instead. The impact this will have is xxxxxxx.

By the way if your theme park is Tayto Park please don't go ahead with the name change!!!

Exactly this.

If it's PR response to any incident where emergency services attend, why wouldn't you?

The PR team will be too busy managing the onslaught of Twitter, press enquiries etc to be able to coordinate on the ground services at the time of the event.

Don't these parks have a Duty Manager on site every hour it's open to the public? Surely they should be trained on coordinating incidents like this?

This is a very out-ing post if all of the facts are true! I hope you changed some OP.

Yes we do already liaise with the relevant emergency services PR teams! However they now want us to be the team at the scene of an incident liaising with the emergency services on the ground so to speak.

I have slightly changed some so that I can’t be identified as easily

It’s currently handled by the duty managers and the operations team. They will still have their jobs and the same number of hours. They have just convinced senior management to shift this particular responsibility to the PR team because they “don’t like doing it” (the head of operations told me this himself).

@CrapBucket what is Tayto Park changing to?! I love those crisps.

This is becoming more and more the norm, a company asking a department to do new things for no extra money, no benefits - it's just a Costcutting exercise.
You need to Push back. Say Your'll work alongside the operations team, but make it clear you won't take the whole job, only the parts that relate to PR, the Twitter bit. And give facts and figures, I'll need x more hours, x more staff, at a cost of £x. Or else they'll walk all over you.

I don’t think that would go down well with management here to be honest

Did the Ops team then have to contact you to do everything and then you replied, so they were just wasting time acting as a messenger service when it would have been solved if you were there in the first place?

So what are you suggesting OP?
You just accept? To take over this whole dept role, no more money, no extra staff, just accept it?

OP definitely works at Jurassic Park.

I will obviously push back on it but I just don’t know how to do it in a way that will make management change their mind

Standard for major incidents would be operational lead plus pr team liaising with emergency services comms team for a joined up approach re messaging etc

PR teams support operational teams not run them! (I work in comms and updated our major incident comms plan today).

If there were such an incident you would need someone figuring out what to do and a different team supporting working out what to say. If you’re focused on operational issues that would leave a huge gap in reputation management and would be a big risk to the organisation. There’s your push back.