When someone senior leaves your SMT and exits the organisation, it’s easy to retrofit reasons for their voluntary departure. We have seen this recently when the Tory party issued an extraordinary and rather insensitive statement linking the defection of Suella Braverman to her mental health. The initial official response included the line: “The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella’s mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy.”
This was, quite rightly, widely condemned as inappropriate – a nasty, personal attack that both stigmatised and trivialised mental health.
In fact, it was an open goal, drawing a backlash not only from Braverman and Reform, but also from charities like Mind and Rethink Mental Illness.
No wonder the Conservative Party had to retract their statement.
Is there anything that organisations within the mortgage sector or the wider financial services industry can learn from this reputational cock-up?
1. Think Before You Respond
First, consider if you have to respond to a big departure. You might make the problem larger than it needs to be.
2. Get Your Response Right
If you do decide to address it, make the effort to get that response right. The Conservative Party claims that it withdrew the mental health reference because it was from a “draft version sent out in error.” The U-turn highlights a level of disorganisation, of poor internal communications and a lack of professionalism in the organisation. The Tory party has suffered multiple high-profile defections recently. While that doesn’t look good for Kemi Badenoch, this sort of response reinforces a perception that she is presiding over an organisation in absolute chaos. If I were in the Tory party comms team, I would spend the day re-examining the draft press release on, say, a potential departure of Ester McVey.
3. Temper your tone
You might consider tempering your tone if an A-player leaves the team (Braverman is, after all, a former home secretary). The statement claimed it was “always a matter of when, not if” she would defect – and attributed her decision to “personal ambition.” That’s as maybe. But the response came across as bitter and ungracious. It also teed up accusations that the Conservative party was, to use Theresa May’s line, the “nasty party”. Indeed, when asked by The i Paper whether the response to Braverman’s defection meant the Tories were once again turning into the “nasty party”, Nigel Farage was left with an absolute sitter. “They are going to get nastier still,” he said. “They know what you perhaps don’t know, which is what the polling is telling them for 7 May.” It was the obvious question for a journalist to ask and the statement offered Farage the chance to hammer home the sense of cataclysmic doom.
4. Read the room
Even the most traditional organisations, operating in the most antediluvian industries, need to make some effort to keep up with the times. A response invoking mental health made the Tory statement read like it came from a GP in the 90s. When prominent Tories such as Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg – not a man known for having his finger on the pulse of popular culture – call your response “dreadful and inexcusable” and urge sackings, you know you’ve lost a step. Your culture needs to keep up with the times.
5. Employee Value Proposition
If you are a leader of an organisation that is unable to retain talent, rather than trying to pick a fight (and Badenoch’s already got a reputation for being able to start a fight in an empty room), you might consider examining whether your EVP is fit for purpose.