Develop Crisis Communication Strategy

Introduction

In managing a crisis, it is essential to realise that the immediate goal of any Crisis Communication Plan should encompass rapid resolution. In ending a crisis as quickly as possible, an organisation must seek to diffuse it and thus maintain integrity and credibility. If possible, the crisis should be turned from a negative experience into a positive experience for the organisation.

These days, transparency, and immediacy are the two critical elements of any crisis response. However, your organisation may have unique constraints that could impact how you respond strategically.

• Are you operating in a litigious environment that makes it tough to issue public apologies?
• Do you have a strong public brand that has to be protected at all costs?
• Some organisations decide that they want to get ahead of bad news, controlling the message, timing, and the way they communicate about them.
• Others prefer a wait and see approach. This is where the organisation is adequately prepared to respond when it becomes clear that the issue will go public but wants to "run for luck" and see if they can minimise the impact

Definition of Crisis Communication Strategy

A crisis communication strategy sets the communication goals, chooses the right media and messages and sets out the method evaluation.

These are the three considerations is to:

• Analyse the management or conservation issue that they may want to address.
• Analyse what communication obstacles have to be addressed to reach or change the relevant stakeholders.
• Define for each group of stakeholders one needs to communicate to (the target group) the communication objectives, the messages, and the means

Crisis Communication Strategy

Prior to a crisis is the best time to put a basic Crisis Communication strategy in place, along with the mechanisms to routinely update it as circumstances change. The Crisis Communication strategy should complement the crisis management strategy, which will be a more general plan for maintaining the continuity of operations, including through essential communications infrastructures such as telephones, computers, and internet access.

The strategy can be divided into the categories of crisis developed at the risk identification stage of the Crisis Communication planning process.

For each category of crisis, the strategy includes:

• Developing key messages for crisis scenario.
• Maintaining a holding statement.
• Identifying the target audience, stakeholders, and interested parties.
• Establishing communicating channels with stakeholders.
• Identifying third party endorsements and opponents.

Crisis Communication Strategies and Objectives

Effective  Crisis  Communication  strategies  will  typically  consider  achieving  the following objectives:

• Maintain connectivity.
• Be readily accessible to the news media.
• Show empathy for the people involved.
• Allow distributed access.
• Streamline communication processes.
• Maintain information security.
• Ensure uninterrupted audit trails.
• Deliver high volume communications.
• Support multi-channel communications.
• Remove dependencies on paper-based processes

Analogy of Crisis Communication Strategy

In any crisis communications situation, when something has gone awry, the organisation’s brand will be under scrutiny. Penn (2015) shared the sources that continue, deter or retart the burning ‘fire’.

Fuel

• The actions the organisation have committed or are accountable for.

Heat and energy

• The surge of views from the public.

Catalyst

• The speed that the organisation can response to i

Similar to a real fire, if the organisation can deny any of these sources (fuel, heat/energy, and catalyst), the organisation can break the chain reaction that causes a fire, and it will stop burning. There are three ways to prevent these “brand fires” are knowledge, ownership, and speed.

Knowledge

The Crisis Communication is equivalent to that of denying fuel for the fire. By giving factual information and knowledge, you reduce the source of rumor and the spread of untrue message through word of mouth. In a crisis, people tend to fill in gaps of knowledge with their suspicions. Remove that speculation with facts, and there will be less for their minds to imagine.

Speed

The Crisis Communication is equivalent to that of denying oxygen for the fire. Speed is crucial in most of the crises. The faster you respond and react, the quicker you deny a crisis the chance to ramp up and get out of hand. What could be an explosive backdraft if allowed to build up can preferably be managed to a slow, controllable burn by being ahead of the news cycle and turning a juicy story into “old news”.

Ownership

The Crisis Communication is equivalent to that of denying heat for the fire. It is to step forward and take ownership or responsibility of a situation. Admit your wrong doings or provide plans and actions to be taken to prevent recurrence of the problem. This pre-empts the blame cycle - pushing the blames to others. By being upfront and owning up to it, the most they can do is to agree with you.

Accept Responsibilities and Deliver Knowledge with Alacrity

The more efficient you are in implementing these Crisis Communication methods, the smaller the fire will grow and the faster you can put it out. Deny a fire for one of the three factors and it will go out, but it may take a while and still cause damage. Deny a fire for all three factors and it will vanish nearly instantly. In your Crisis Communication, with the acceptance of responsibility and delivery of knowledge with stunning alacrity, you can intercept the fire while it is still just a few sparks.

Reference

Goh, M. H. (2015). A Manager's Guide to Implementing Your IT Crisis Communication Plan. Business Continuity Management Specialist Series. Singapore: GMH Pte Ltd.

Extracted from "Develop Crisis Communication Strategy"

More Information About Crisis Communication Blended Learning

To know more about our blended learning program and when the next course is scheduled, feel free to contact our friendly course consultant colleagues via sales.ap@bcm-institute.org.  They are the BL-CC-3 Blended Learning CC-300 Crisis Communication Implementer and the BL-CC-5 Blended Learning CC-5000 Crisis Communication Expert Implementer.