by Charlie Vavasour

The news that Pfizer is shutting down its Sandwich operation is devastating for the 2,400 who work there, and also for the wider east Kent economy.

This is news that will impact on the lives of many thousands of people in east Kent and further afield, and yet the communications surrounding the announcement appeared surprisingly unplanned and unclear.

As the news was breaking, there were many rumours flying around which the media wanted to report on, but no clear message from Pfizer.

Television news reports featuring reporters outside the gates of the facility interviewing staff as they came and went from work was a clear indication that there was an information vacuum.

News packages were being put together based on rumour and individuals' opinions about what was happening, with no official steer.

Central government, local authorities and Pfizer employees knew something was happening but had no detail, and the company was keeping silent.

From Pfizer's point of view it was a difficult, controversial announcement. Always in these cases the worst thing that can happen is workers learn about impending redundancy from a news report, before hearing it officially from the company. It looks as though Pfizer was, correctly, being very mindful of this.

However, careful media management can ensure that staff, stakeholders and the wider media can be informed very quickly one after the other, without leaving an information vacuum as Pfizer did, with no one acting as spokesperson to the wider world on the day of the announcement.

The announcement should have been planned like a military operation, but it appears that Pfizer didn't manage to reconcile all the individual parts of the plan.

But does it really matter? Pfizer is the world's largest pharmaceuticals company, and it operates in a global economy, and needs to make decisions on a global scale. This is all understood. If its reputation in east Kent takes a bit of a battering it is not going to impact on its sales and profitability. Ultimately, people will not stop buying Viagra because of the way the company handled its announcement.

But there is another element here that is rapidly disappearing from our commercial sector - corporate responsibility. Starting with Quakers such as Joseph Rowntree more than 100 years ago, companies began to see that they had a responsibility to society.

They couldn't operate without society (schools to educate its workers, roads for them to get to work, a police force to maintain law and order), and so felt a responsibility to engage with and support "society". Unfortunately this element of commercial operations seems to have gone from the mindset of companies large and small.

Perhaps it's now time for companies to, once again, start understanding their interaction with society and not focus so much on the profit margin.

Pfizer should have got its communications right, put forward a spokesperson to explain the announcement - and give it a human face - and thank east Kent for everything it had done to make the company a success.

This proactive approach would have made the negative announcement slightly more palatable and would have protected the large amounts of goodwill that Pfizer has built up in the area over the years it has been operating.

This can't be classified as a PR disaster, but it's a long way from best practice and could have been managed much more effectively.

• Charlie Vavasour is managing director of Quantum Public Relations in Ashford. Tel: 01233 500200.