Crisis Communication - 10 Steps

Last week, in my article “Crisis? Security? How to Prepare?”, I briefly touched on crisis communication. I’ve put together 10 practical steps for handling crisis communication.

Every organization is vulnerable to crises. The days of playing ostrich—burying your head in the sand and hoping the problem will go away—are over. You can try it, but don’t expect other stakeholders to understand or forgive you.

If you don’t prepare, you’ll suffer greater damage. When I review existing crisis management plans during a “vulnerability audit,” I often find that many crisis-related communication issues have not been addressed. Experience shows that an organization’s leadership often fails to understand that, in the absence of adequate internal and external communication:

• Day-to-day operations will break down.
• Stakeholders will not know what is happening and will quickly become confused, angry, and react negatively.
• The organization will be perceived as unreliable at best and criminally negligent at worst.
• The time required to fully resolve the problem will often be prolonged, sometimes dramatically.
• The impact on financial and reputational outcomes will be more severe.

10 Steps to Crisis Communication

BEFORE A CRISIS

1. Anticipate Crises

If you are proactive and prepare for crises, you have your own security/crisis team. You meet regularly to discuss all potential crises that could occur within your organization. This exercise has at least two immediate benefits:

• You may realize that some situations can be prevented simply by adjusting existing operating procedures.
• You can begin to think about possible responses and best-case and worst-case scenarios.

2. Identify Your Crisis Communications Team

A small team of senior executives should be identified to serve as your organization’s crisis communications team. Ideally, the team will be led by the organization’s CEO, with senior executives from public relations and legal counsel serving as key advisors.

3. Identify and train spokespersons

Every organization should ensure that only authorized spokespersons speak on its behalf. All of the organization’s spokespersons during a crisis must have:

• The Right Skills
• The right position
• Proper training

The right skills: I’ve met executives who stood fearlessly in front of a conference audience of 1,000 people—but were completely paralyzed in front of a camera. These days, a spokesperson’s responsibilities always include online communication and social media.

The right position: Only certain types of highly sensitive crises practically require the CEO to serve as the lead spokesperson. Some executives are excellent organizational leaders but are not very effective personal communicators.

4. Train Your Spokesperson

All of your spokespersons should undergo specialized training on how to speak with the media. They should learn the critical differences between proactive PR and crisis communications.

5. Establish notification and monitoring systems

Notification systems: Today, we must have the means to reach all of our internal and external stakeholders at our fingertips. It is absolutely essential to establish notification systems before a crisis strikes that will allow you to quickly reach your stakeholders through various channels.

Monitoring systems: Gathering intelligence is a fundamental part of both crisis prevention and response. Knowing what is being said about you on social media, in traditional media, and among your employees and customers often allows you to catch a negative “trend” early.

6. Identify and Understand Your Stakeholders

Who are the internal and external stakeholders that are important to your organization? Employees are considered your most important audience; therefore, every employee is a PR representative and crisis manager for your organization—whether you like it or not!

7. Prepare press releases

Press releases or brief statements can be prepared in advance. An example might be a statement issued by a hotel chain with locations affected by a natural disaster: “We have implemented our crisis plan, which places the highest priority on the health and safety of our guests and staff.”

POST-CRISIS

8. Assess the crisis situation

Responding without adequate information is a classic case of “shoot first, ask questions later.” The crisis communications team gathers information from employees and ensures that the correct type of information is provided.

9. Finalize and refine key messages

The crisis communications team must develop crisis-specific messages. Limit yourself to no more than three main messages that apply to all stakeholders, and, as needed, include some messages tailored to specific audience groups.

10. Post-crisis analysis

Once it’s all over, ask: “What did we learn from this?” Conduct a formal analysis of what was done right, what went wrong, and what could be done better next time.

“That Can’t Happen to Us”

Thousands of organizations affected by natural and man-made disasters have suffered far greater damage than they would have if they’d had a fully developed crisis communication plan.

I’d like to believe that all lodging facilities have a plan and are crisis-ready. However, I’m afraid that in reality, 95 percent of tourism organizations are either completely unprepared or significantly underprepared for crises.

Make the decision to be part of that prepared minority. Your partners will appreciate it!

Petra Kazdová
, Senior Consultant