The 5 steps of best-practice crisis communication
A crisis for an organisation can be anything from a natural disaster or a pandemic (as we’re all familiar with!) through to financial instability, leadership issues, or everything in between. While some crises you can plan for, others will come out of the blue. But whether it’s something you’ve foreseen or not, these five simple steps can help you navigate the communications required to help maintain trust in your organisation, and protect its reputation.
1 Assess
With the Crisis Management Team, your first step is to assess the situation and answer all the key questions: Who, what, when, where, how and why the crisis happened or will happen. In short, get your facts straight!
In the case of a disaster or violent incident, your first question should always be: “Is everyone safe and well?”. Then ensure all the steps are in place to help those who need it immediately.
2 Prepare
One you’ve assembled the facts, it’s time to prepare to communicate. This stage involves prepping your key spokesperson - which should be the CEO or the person most responsible / accountable. Putting forward a spokesperson with no accountability could be interpreted as your organisation’s leaders don’t care.
When prepping leaders:
Ask all the questions media / other stakeholders are likely to ask
Equip them with key messages that demonstrate empathy
Remind them not to speculate or make assumptions about what’s happened / could happen - it’s okay to say ‘I can’t comment on that right now, but I will as soon as I know more’
Ensure they are aware of any legal obligations and risks
It’s also at this time that you prep your crisis comms plan - or, update the one you’d already prepared in your regular crisis comms reviews! Make sure your plan:
Captures all stakeholders
Is clear on roles and responsibilities
Is flexible enough to adapt to changing situations
It’s also really important at this point to remind those involved in reviews and approvals that they need to do so quickly - in most cases, your business can’t afford to wait all day for someone to approve an email or media statement. They need to prioritise this work.
3 Activate
Once everyone is clear on what they need to do and when, it’s time to activate your comms plan!
In the case of an emergency or sudden, unexpected crisis, we try to operate quickly using the ‘Golden Hour’ rule. Essentially, within the first hour of being alerted of the crisis, you should release a statement to all stakeholders. It only has to be very basic at this point, but it will demonstrate that you are aware of what’s happening and you’re acting quickly.
This buys you time to prep your spokesperson and draft the initial round of other comms to be released. It also gives you time to get a spokesperson to travel to a site to speak with employees and media if required.
4 Review
A ‘crisis’ can carry on for a day, a week, a month or years! But if you wait that long to do a review, you’re doing yourself a disservice - you’ll never have a formal opportunity to learn from your activity and put new or modified practices in place.
At the end of ‘day zero’, you should regroup as a team to assess how the comms was received that day, any roadblocks you encountered, and what the plan is for the next day. In the ‘acute’ phase of the crisis, this will be a daily occurrence.
We recommend holding a formal review a few days or a week after the ‘acute’ phase is over - this gives people time to reflect and prepare for the review. Make sure you provide a few questions as guardrails, such as:
What worked well?
What could have been done better or differently?
What will we change in our plans moving forward?
What are our next steps?
5 Recover
This brings us to the recovery phase. After the worst is over, there’s often work to do to salvage an organisation’s reputation or rebuild trust in leaders. This is not a quick fix - trust takes time to rebuild.
This is where corporate social responsibility activity usually needs to be ramped up. You may have to give back in some way to a local community, provide ongoing assistance for team members, change policies and procedures … whatever it is, it needs to be genuine action that all leaders are committed to.
Does your business have a Crisis Communication Plan?
HMC offers Crisis Communication Packages - choose the package you need for your business’s needs! Packages include training and a Crisis Communication Plan or template, depending on your need. Find out more here.
