5 Powerful Tips For Successful Crisis Communications

Crisis communication refers to how your business communicates during a disruptive event. As crises generally happen unexpectedly, it’s difficult to properly prepare for them, and they can’t always be avoided; however, preparing an effective crisis communication procedure is possible, and can make a huge difference during a business disaster. Here are my top tips for handling crisis communications in the workplace.

1. Prepare Your Employees

As well as being directly affected by a crisis, employees are often sent out to the metaphorical battlefield to pick up the pieces. It’s critical that employees know how to act in a crisis, for their own benefit as well as to help keep your business’ reputation intact.

“Mid-crisis is not the best time to start piling new information on the shoulders of your employees. Chances are, they’re already feeling panicked and frantic. Instead, get prepared now, and ensure that all your employees know the crisis policy well before it’s needed,” suggests Adam Carter, PR manager at Paper Fellows and State of writing.

2. Identify A Designated Crisis Team

In the midst of a crisis, you want to be able to start pumping out damage-limiting communications as soon as possible. To help achieve this, assemble an unflappable team of senior executives, managers, PR professionals and legal advisers who are ready to tackle any crisis head-on.

3. Invest In Training

As explained in point one, all employees should be well-versed in your crisis policy, but your crisis team should undergo extra training to ensure they know exactly what to do in case of a crisis.

A particularly effective way of making sure the team knows what to do in a crisis is to draw from experience and look at how crises were handled by other companies in the public eye. This can help you learn what, and equally as importantly what not, to do.

Crucially, make sure any spokespeople know what to say. Anyone, even the most confident public speaker, can get flustered in a crisis, particularly if lots of difficult questions need to be answered under pressure.

4. Utilize Group Messaging

Who would you need to contact immediately in a crisis?

Have a careful think about this question and draw up a list of anyone you would want to reach quickly in a sticky situation.

Emails are an obvious way to reach out to a large group of people quickly, but it’s not uncommon for a crisis to involve technological problems. If you were unable to access your email account, what would you do?

“Group messaging via mobile phone is a great alternative. Make sure you have the contact details of any important stakeholders that you would want to contact in a crisis and add them into a group chat. They’re then ready to contact en masse at the touch of a button”, advises Ruby England, a business writer at Boom Essays and Essay Roo.

5. Ensure Accuracy, Integrity And Honesty

Transparent, open communication with employees, and anyone else embroiled in a crisis, is a great way to build trust going forward. This will help unify your employees and increase the chances of your organization coming out of the other side of the crisis unscathed.

Honestly is just as important. Do not lie: you will always be found out, and the crisis will be amplified. If you do not know the truth, or you need more time to formulate an appropriate message, say just that. No information at all is preferable to information that causes people to question the integrity of your business.

In the age of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, people have come to expect constant updates. Do not give in to the pressure; an accurate response trumps an efficient response.

Perhaps most importantly of all, get advice from legal and PR professionals. Once a statement is out there, it can’t be taken back, so getting it right the first time is paramount.

Final Thoughts

A crisis can undoubtedly be a stressful time for any business, and lack of preparation can amplify the impact of a crisis tenfold. Use the tips above to set out a crisis communications plan now – your future self will thank you.

Author Bio:

Christina Lee is a writer at Do my homework and a project manager at UK Writings and OX Essays. Her areas of expertise include marketing news and tools and technologies for marketing.