Crisis communications planning is a critical part of your business continuity plan. And, while you can’t predict the next crisis or its impact on your company, there’s a lot you can do to prepare in advance. Your future self will thank you – planning now will go a long way to help manage the situation when the worst happens, and can make the difference between business success or failure.
Put your crisis plan in place
A well thought through process will help prevent you being overwhelmed – and will illustrate that not every crisis is a full-scale disaster.
- Impact assessment
All crises should be taken seriously at first, until you’ve gathered the facts and carried out an impact assessment. From a Tier 1 crisis with the potential to cause severe reputational damage to a Tier 4 incident that can be more readily contained, the crisis plan including organisational impact, resource allocation, response protocols and crisis team should all be prepared in advance.
Your organisation’s impact assessment should be based on a tiered framework. You won’t always need the full team for every scenario, but don’t underestimate any potential crisis until you’ve completed the impact assessment and are armed with the facts. A seemingly innocent issue can start small and quickly spiral out of control. It is far better to scale back rather than scramble to scale up your response.
Impact assessment framework
- Set up the crisis team
You only have to look at the very public HMV issue in 2013 to realise the importance of not only having the CEO, senior management and company spokespeople in the room, but also members of the team who understand your communications channels – critically important if negative publicity is unfolding before your eyes and you can’t shut your feeds down.
Make sure that people know who can and, critically, who can’t represent the company externally, who any calls or emails should be passed to and what their script should be.
- Organise your contact lists
You’ll need to contact people fast to develop a co-ordinated response. Get your contact lists together, likely a WhatsApp group on standby for activation. As a minimum, you’ll need to alert the crisis team and your trained company spokespeople, as well as have details of stakeholders and key media contacts to release co-ordinated updates.
- Write your positioning statements
Company positioners, contingency plans and up-to-date key message statements can all be prepared in advance. Standard statements will buy valuable time in external and press communications while you’re investigating the details.
- Train media spokespeople
Train your media spokespeople – and make sure they are regularly rehearsed in the potential scenarios you’ve identified so they’re ready to go. You’ll need to react fast and via the most appropriate communications channels in the event of an incident.
“The time to plan for a crisis is not when the crisis is happening. If you don’t have a plan, now is the time to make one.” - Alison Owen, Head of Public Relations, The Scott Partnership
Managing a real-time media landscape
- Set up an early warning system
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help you adopt a proactive model of crisis management, by analysing historical data, and scanning the news 24/7, to predict the likelihood and potential impact of events unfolding. This risk identification can trigger an early warning system for potential threats, and helps you develop contingency plans in advance.
- First response
Effective crisis management deals in knowns, not unknowns – and until you know what’s happened and how the situation is unfolding, take it very seriously. A well intentioned yet uninformed response will usually only make things worse.
- Get your tone of voice right
First and foremost, your tone of voice must be appropriate, both to your brand and to the situation. A good rule of thumb is to keep in mind three key points – transparency, ownership and consistency.
Be transparent
You’ll need to respond as quickly, openly and authentically as possible – without making things up or speculating.
Take ownership
Don’t finger point, try to shift the blame or downplay the gravity of the situation. Taking personal responsibility for the issue and keeping your promises goes a long way to earn respect.
Nobody has forgotten the response of BP during the Deepwater Horizon oil crisis. The company reacted late, attempting to downplay the impact of the massive oil spill while the world was watching events unfold live on social media, then tried to shift responsibility to a subcontractor, before finally the CEO hammered home the last nail with his statement, “There’s nobody wants this thing over more than I do. I’d like my life back.” Eleven people died in the explosion on the rig.
Be consistent
Your business needs to put out consistent messaging throughout the story and across all selected channels. This is where your key message statements will inform a unified response.
The importance of a debrief
- Understand the root cause
Look at what went wrong: was there a breakdown in communication, were the company spokespeople unprepared or did you simply not see it coming? Getting clarity now will result in the best possible outcomes next time.
- Did the plan work?
While you might be tempted to simply move on, the lessons you can learn from managing a crisis successfully are key. Fine-tuning your crisis management protocols now will save time and resources in future – and could help prevent a business-critical disaster.
Don’t go it alone
Bring in the experts. At The Scott Partnership, we have years of experience in planning and managing communications on behalf of our clients in the scientific and technology industries. Get in touch to discuss how we can help.
