Communication Planning for a Crisis

Every organization needs a Crisis Management Team - a key component of effective risk management - made up of the organization’s most capable leaders. This team performs a number of tasks that allow the organization to best weather unforeseen storms:

• Representing distinct department functions, each team member has a clear role and set of responsibilities;

• They perform an enterprise-wide risk assessment; and

• They know how to work together in preplanned scenarios.

A crisis communications strategy is a critical component of an organization’s overall crisis management plan.

Best Practices for Crisis Communications

The Crisis Management Team (CMT) is responsible (1) developing the crisis management plan, which should be reviewed regularly, practiced, and continuously improved; and (2) establishing a secondary team dedicated to crisis communications. Each crisis team member should be familiar with and well-practiced in their roles and responsibilities.

1. Establish a Crisis Communication Team (CCT): Reporting into the CMT, the CCT should be led by the marketing communications or public relations function. Because of the diverse set of audiences impacted during a crisis, the CCT should include other organizational functions, such as human resources, legal, accounting, finance, information technology, and others based on the organization-specific external risks previously identified by the CMT.

2. Identify Spokespeople: For larger organizations, this might mean several crisis communications teams that report into a central crisis management team, each with its own spokesperson.

3. Be Prepared:  Each team should have press release templates tailored to various crisis situations and access to ‘evergreen’ (or continuously updated) media contact lists with a pre-planned rollout.

4. Communicate quickly, accurately, and transparently to both internal and external stakeholders.

   • “You have 48 to 72 hours to get your story out before the narrative from expert sources becomes the story dominating the headlines, airwaves, and social media… Acknowledge there is a problem and apologize for it. Show empathy and understanding for any victims. Too often when discussing a crisis, business leaders seem impervious to the human cost or seem more concerned about the company’s bottom line. Be sincere in your apology.” - Strategic Vision

5. Maintain a list of key stakeholders and quickly engage them to provide information and support, and tailor communications to address each group’s respective concerns.

   • For employees, the crisis communications team may need to work with the human resources and/or legal representatives to review and approve internal communications. Unlike press releases for media agencies, internal memos may be more difficult to prepare in advance of a crisis and require timely team review and input.

6. Communication Channels: Use a multi-pronged approach, including social media, press releases, email newsletters, and face-to-face communications. It is critical for an organization to take and keep control of the unfolding story.

7. Post-Crisis: Crisis communications do not end with the crisis. Once the crisis is past, immediately start a review of the plan’s effectiveness, lessons learned, and feedback from stakeholders to identify areas for improvement. The post-crisis assessment should also include a diligent study of brand impact from various types of media mentions.

8. Review and Adjust the Plan: Upon concluding the ‘post-mortem’ on the crisis, review and edit the plan based on key learnings from the crisis and regularly practice the plan during pre-crisis times to account for organizational changes or updated risk assessments in a changing environment.

Effective crisis management planning makes your organization more resilient when the unexpected inevitably occurs.

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