The Elements Involved In Crisis Communication Planning

[Purvi Dalvi]

With so many responsibilities and duties involved at workplaces, people often juggle and multi-task for meeting project deadlines and pushing the unimportant ones at a later period. While this strategy may work for some of the tasks, it can lead to complication and problems during a crisis. It can occur at any point in time and cause significant changes to the company’s style and efficiency in providing services to its customers.

A well-formulated and regularly updated crisis communication planning system is required for ensuring the position of the organisation’s infrastructure to respond to a series of human-made and natural events. Right from floods and pandemics, to theft of medical data and lawsuits, there are many other forms of crises. Planning for all occasions is not possible, but with a systematic procedure of handling them, many organisations can save their reputations from getting eradicated.

A crisis is a sudden and unexpected event. If there is mismanagement, it can result in the decline of profits, increased litigation, job loss, decreased morale of employees, damage to reputation, decreased competitive strength, increased government interference and consumer activism, and lower trust in the company’s staff.

Crises can include natural disasters such as floods, tornadoes and blizzards to external disasters and medical emergencies, including fires, chemical exposures, and multiple victim accidents.

The elements of this plan are as follows:

1. Detailed plan:

The crisis should be handled with a solid strategy that would explain how the organisation would handle and communicate about it. The plan includes:

• The purpose and the explanation of the requirement
• The circumstances under which the plan can be activated
• The steps that need to be taken for internal and external communication of the plan 

2. Handling the crises:

A crisis communication team is hired for collecting information, creating and spreading key messages, and involving with the media. All the members of the group are assigned separate tasks. Each of their contact details should be included.

3. Key messages:

It is safer to consider all the crises that an organisation could face and develop key messages for their response. Make a note of the possible questions that can be asked during media interviews and answers that are appropriate. The messages should contain:

• Identification of the cause of the crisis
• A detailed description of the events that had occurred
• Scheduled plan
• Help for crisis victims
• Suggest measures to fight the situation

4. Internal communication:

During the crisis, decide a medium of communication for employees like meetings, voicemail, group chats, etc. Consider how they would communicate without internal connection sources. Employees should be made aware of your organisation’s media and social media policy, and they should understand that they are not to talk to the press.