Comms and Crisis Management
A crisis can come at any point to a business -big or small. It’s defined as any event that causes major disruption to the business and can cause harm to a business's reputation.
Although we’d all rather avoid them, it is best to be prepared for how you would respond to a crisis if one should happen.
What constitutes a crisis?
A crisis can arise unexpectedly and come out of nowhere, or you might see coming and proactively prepare a response.
A crisis could stem from an employee’s tweet, a client interaction, or a supply chain issue – something you least expect that puts the business well and truly in the spotlight.
There are 8 main areas a crisis could fall into:
· Financial- Financial loss such as announcing a bankruptcy or store closures.
· Personnel- Changes to staff that may affect operations or reputation such as employee furloughs, layoffs, or controversial behaviour.
· Organizational- Misconduct or wrongdoing as a result of organizational practices.
· Technological- Technological failure that results in outages causing reduced functionality or functionality loss.
· Natural- Natural crisis that necessitates an announcement or change of procedure. For example, defining safety precautions amid a health crisis.
· Confrontation - Discontent individuals confront an organization as a result of unmet needs or demands.
· Workplace Violence - Violence is committed by a current or former employee against other employees.
· Crisis of Malevolence - A business uses criminal or illegal means to destabilize, harm, extort, or destroy a competitor.
PR Crisis Management Strategies
How a company responds to a crisis can help with reputational management and have a positive impact. Conversely responding badly to a crisis can cause long-term damage that can be difficult to come back from.
There are several strategies that a company can implement as part of a Crisis Management Plan including:
1) Spokesperson response
When a company makes a mistake, apologising is the best thing to do. By having assigned spokespeople within the organisation, there is a face, name and voice that will speak on the brand’s behalf. This could be the CEO or an executive. It’s important it is someone who is a good communicator and confident in front of the media.
2) Proactive damage control
If you are aware something is going to occur that is going to have an impact on stakeholders, implement proactive damage control. This will reduce or prevent the effects of a crisis before it occurs. It could be getting communication out ahead of the issue with help, advice and tips; setting up a dedicated help desk or issuing a press release with details.
3) Case escalation
Creating a system in-house within your customer service team that can diffuse the issue before it gets out of hand is a great way of managing a crisis. This team will be fully briefed on the issue, and have procedures in place and clear lines to take to help respond to the crisis.
4) Social media response
Whether your business uses social media or not, if a crisis affects the business, there is a good chance someone will share their issues/observations on social media. Having a fully briefed social media team with clear responses to issues and complaints is important. The team also needs to know what not to respond to and avoid taking matters into their own hands.
5) Customer feedback and analysis
Having a process to collate customer feedback when a crisis occurs is key for lessons learnt and helps show the company is responding to issues raised. Dedicating time to analysing what happened and a review with senior management, along with post-crisis communication is an important stage in managing a crisis.
Preparing a Crisis Communication Plan
A crisis communication plan is a set of guidelines used to prepare a business for an emergency or unexpected event. These plans include steps to take when a crisis first emerges, how to communicate with the public, and how to prevent the issue from occurring again. It would include:
· Identifying the crisis team and liaising with the senior management team/crisis response team including full contact details
· Spokespeople's contact details
· Details on how to manage media and social media statements, press releases, interviews and media visits as appropriate
· Process in monitoring press/media coverage and taking action as required
· How to manage internal communications [add in link to HR team if internal communications is managed jointly]
· Advising on actions necessary to protect the business's reputation
Creating a table with all the actions incorporating the details mentioned above, along with who is responsible, and status is a useful guide to go through. This will ensure you have the steps in place to complete if a crisis occurs.
It’s also useful to include in the crisis plan possible scenarios that could occur as a point of reference and the practical implementation of the actions and guidance within the plan.
When a plan is created, it’s important that all the key stakeholders mentioned in the plan have signed it off and are prepared for what they’ll need to do in the event of a crisis.
It’s also important to review the plan on a regular basis to ensure contact details and potential risks and issues are captured, and processes updated.
Having a crisis template that can be completed when a crisis occurs by a designated team member will enable that key information to be collated as soon as possible to manage and monitor the crisis.
A template could include:
• Incident:
• Date:
• Headline facts:
• Unconfirmed details:
• Key stakeholder’s contact details:
• Questions to answer (inc difficult ones)
• Answers to questions
• Contact – Stakeholder details and named staff contact liaison
• Method of contact
• Response from customers/stakeholders
Good, clear communication in a crisis is essential. If you take a position that avoids addressing the issue, accepting blame, or coming across as disingenuous or apathetic it will do untold damage to the brand.
Being prepared with a set of processes, systems and roles will help save time and enable you to take control of the situation before the situation takes control of you.