WPP Strengthens Global Resilience and Employee Safety Across 100+ Countries

Coordinating Emergency Communication Across a Global Agency Network

Headquartered in London, WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands, employing around 100,000 people in over 100 countries and home to iconic agency brands including Ogilvy, VML, and WPP Media. Its teams operate from offices, studios, and client sites around the world. At WPP’s scale, disruption rarely happens in just one place, and incidents ranging from natural disasters to geopolitical unrest can unfold simultaneously across multiple regions.

As James Anderson, Group Director, WPP Global Risk & Resilience, explains: “The challenge is how we respond to multiple threats at once and get clear communication out quickly, across multiple markets, understand where our people are, and support them with the right information in real time.”

His focus is on improving response readiness while supporting employees through critical events. “We had what I would call a last-mile challenge,” he says. “We could generate communications, but ensuring people received, understood, and acted on them was the difficulty. We need a solution that enables us to be ready to respond and support our people wherever they are.”

WPP implemented AlertMedia to strengthen emergency communication during critical events. The organization uses it to quickly reach employees during incidents that may impact operations and safety, from storm cycles in Southeast Asia to wildfires in California. The platform enables targeted, multichannel messaging and two-way communication, giving teams better visibility into how employees receive and act on critical information. With AlertMedia, WPP can keep employees safe and maintain a coordinated, resilient response across the business.

Ready to Respond and Support People Wherever They Are

As part of WPP’s global resilience program, their established network of global resilience leaders and incident response teams run business continuity testing, helping teams prepare for a range of scenarios. Through the Business Continuity Tests, they identified that while teams could agree on the right response, getting clear, timely communication out to employees across the business was a challenge.

The nature of disruption made this even harder. With employees in more than 100 countries, WPP faces a wide range of location-based risks, including typhoons, earthquakes, wildfires, geopolitical unrest, and emerging security threats. And these events don’t always occur in isolation—different threats can affect several parts of the business at once. “We’re seeing more disruption-as-usual, rather than business-as-usual,” says Anderson. “The challenge is how we respond to multiple threats at once and make sure our communication keeps up.”

Prior to AlertMedia, WPP relied on a mix of email, virtual meeting and event tools, messaging platforms, phone outreach, and locally managed processes, with different agencies using their own technology or systems. That sometimes made it difficult to respond quickly or communicate consistently. It also created gaps in visibility. Teams could send updates, but they had no reliable way to confirm who had received them, whether people understood what to do next, or where follow-up was still needed.

“We needed a way to communicate effectively with our people at times of disruption or crisis,” says Anderson. “We couldn’t rely on traditional channels all of the time, especially when trying to reach specific locations quickly.”

That need became even clearer during testing across WPP’s agency network. “Business continuity testing made clear our need for a more robust emergency communication platform,” says Phil Wilkinson, Group Technology Director at Design Bridge and Partners, part of WPP. “It had to support fast, structured communication at scale, without relying on fragmented or non-corporate tools.”

Delivering Targeted, Multichannel Communication From One Platform

WPP chose AlertMedia to bring consistency and control to its communications during disruptions. According to Anderson, AlertMedia stood out for its ability to support an organization of WPP’s size and complexity, while remaining flexible enough to adapt to how their teams operate around the world.

The platform’s ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 compliance align with WPP’s information security practices, while integration with identity systems like Okta helps teams identify who may be impacted using existing employee data. “What’s great with AlertMedia is that it plugs into our Okta platform, which has our core data,” says Wilkinson. “That means we can start reaching the right people much faster, using existing data instead of building everything from scratch.”

With that foundation, WPP’s Global Resilience Leaders can communicate by location and risk rather than relying on broad distribution lists or manual outreach, allowing a more precise and dependable way to reach employees wherever they’re working.

WPP uses the platform both to prepare for and respond to critical events. With pre-built templates for common scenarios, teams can send updates as soon as an incident occurs. Messages can be automatically translated into local languages across channels. And the mobile app extends that reach, allowing leaders to send and receive alerts from anywhere.

AlertMedia’s two-way communication gives teams immediate insight into message delivery and employee responses. WPP can quickly see who has received and acknowledged an alert and where follow-up or support is needed. That feedback loop helps teams stay coordinated and adjust as situations evolve.

“AlertMedia has become the go-to platform for our global resilience leaders,” says Andrea Harris, Group Chief Counsel at WPP. “It allows us to communicate across multiple markets, understand where our people are, and support them with the right information in real time.”

Reducing Delays and Improving Coordination During Critical Events

With AlertMedia, WPP has a reliable way to manage communication during critical events. What was once fragmented across regions and agencies is now a coordinated, global response capability. Teams can respond faster when every minute matters and get the right information to the right people, allowing for a coordinated, global response capability across regions and agencies.

One of the most immediate changes is how teams handle the early stages of an incident. “The first 15 to 30 minutes of our response is often the most critical,” says Anderson. “AlertMedia allows us to get clear communication out quickly and help drive the initial response.”

Employees receive timely communication and feel more connected to the organization during high-stress moments. “We’ve received positive feedback from employees who feel supported,” says Harris. It also strengthens how WPP delivers on its duty of care, ensuring employees can be reached and supported wherever they are.

At the leadership level, that translates into better visibility and faster decision-making. Teams have a clearer view of where people may be at risk and can stay aligned as conditions change. “One of the things that’s been really valuable is the ability to map our locations against potential risk areas,” says Harris. “We can see where our campuses and people are in relation to risk hotspots and use that to prioritize support and make more informed decisions.”

WPP is now expanding its use of AlertMedia through a phased global rollout across additional agencies and countries, including the U.K., India, Ireland, China, the U.S., and Canada. This represents a shift from individual agency use to a more centralized global deployment, consolidating from previous point solutions. Alongside that expansion, WPP is continuing to build on the platform’s capabilities, from introducing local numbers for global notifications to exploring integrations with tools like Microsoft Teams.

“AlertMedia has been a true partner to us,” adds Anderson. “They understand the scale of our business and have worked closely with us to make sure we’re ready to respond and support our people wherever they are.”

Putting People at the Center of Resilience

At WPP, resilience is built around its people—and it’s become everyone’s responsibility. “Resilience has moved from being a responsibility of business continuity teams to being embedded as part of our operational mandate and program,” says Anderson. “People are our biggest asset, so operational resilience must start with them. Our teams support clients all over the world. Resilience is about making sure they’re prepared and that we’re supporting their ability to respond and thrive during disruption.”

With AlertMedia, WPP can put its people-first approach to resilience into practice across its global workforce. “For our people to do their best work, they need to feel safe and secure,” adds Wilkinson. “AlertMedia gives them the confidence that they’re being looked after and supported when they need it most.”

For WPP, preparedness is less about predicting every scenario and more about being ready to respond. “We can’t predict everything that’s going to happen anywhere in the world. We’ll never be able to anticipate every situation,” explains Harris. “AlertMedia helps make sure we’re prepared, so when something does happen, we know where our people are and how to reach them without delay.”