ONR1155 - Provision of Media Training to the Office for Nuclear Regulation Senior Leadership Team

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) is the independent UK regulator of the nuclear industry, including existing, decommissioned and new reactors. It employs more than 700 professional staff, with specialist regulatory roles (e.g. nuclear safety/security/safeguards); corporate professions including Policy and Communications, Finance, Information Technology (IT), and Human Resources, and other core functions.

ONR's Head Office, housing its main functions, is in Bootle, Liverpool, with two smaller offices in London and Cheltenham. ONR independently regulates nuclear safety and security at 37 nuclear licensed sites in the UK.

We also regulate transport and ensure that safeguards obligations for the UK are met. Our duty is to ensure that the nuclear industry controls its hazards effectively, has a culture of continuous improvement and maintains high standards.

ONR requires media training for selected members of its Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and the ONR Chair to support effective, confident and consistent engagement with the media, parliamentary committees and other public-facing communication channels including social media. The training will help senior representatives respond to challenging questions, communicate complex regulatory issues clearly and develop concise, confident on-camera skills for digital and social media channels.

ONR is seeking to award a contract to a suitably qualified media training supplier to design and deliver tailored media and social media training for members of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and ONR Chair. The training must reflect the different specialisms, public-facing responsibilities and leadership roles within ONR.

ONR also requires the ability to arrange refresher training and additional ad hoc training for further personnel, as required, at fixed rates for the duration of the contract. The successful contractor will supply broadcast media training to enable ONR personnel to talk confidently to a camera, virtually, down-the-line (radio) but also to other media including print media and social media messaging.

Training should support ONR personnel to adapt their style and message delivery, depending on audience, channel and line of questioning, and be confident in conveying key messages, even when under pressure. Training will also encompass developing ONR personnel to deliver competent video messaging for social media and longer form in-house videos, requiring subjects to be confident in front of a camera, able to deliver strong messaging and narratives without prompts or uncertainty.

Training may be provided virtually where practical, and also in ONR's offices (Bootle, Cheltenham and/or London) depending on the nature of the training required and the availability of ONR personnel. The contractor should make use of equipment as necessary to create a realistic environment for a range of different media scenarios, with an ability to play back interviews to review and improve performance.

Training should be made up of a blended approach of face-to-face sessions, duration of approximately 3 hours or 0.5 day per individual, and shorter refresher sessions delivered virtually (e.g. via Zoom or MS Teams) of between 1-2 hours. More than one media trainer should be made available to deliver sessions so that training participants experience different interview styles during the course of their training.

The contractor will be required to liaise with the ONR Communications team to work up realistic scenarios for training and will carry out independent research to produce a "key messages" briefing tailored for each session. The contractor will advise on the level of advanced preparation that will be required by SLT participants.

Knowledge of the nuclear industry, ONR's role and regulatory parlance is highly desirable and the contractor must be able to present projected costs for such preparatory work. The contractor will also train ONR personnel to be able to perform competently in the parliamentary committee arena when the dynamic is different to a media environment, but no less pressured.