MANAGING CRISIS
Step #1: Identify and Document possible crisis scenarios.
Brainstorm potential threats and responses. Think through possible crisis scenarios and how it can be responded to. List down possible emergency situations or similar situations faced earlier or similar organizations have faced in the past.
Step #2: Monitor emerging crises and threats.
After documenting potential business risks and threats, next step would be to find a way to monitor them. Ensure internal teams have documented processes and procedures for identifying, evaluating, and escalating emerging threats using public sources. Alerts need to be set up.
Step #3: Prepare a crisis communications team
Create a crisis communication team of people from across the organization who can help respond to a crisis. Assign each person a designated role.
Include at least one member from the leadership team as they’ll be the primary spokesperson and should be kept up to date on all decisions and actions.
Step #4: Prepare a set of spokespersons and employees
A set of people ready for external communications and another for internal so that authorized people handle such requests to ensure the fidelity of messaging.
Select one or more trusted persons in the company to act as internal spokesperson to pass on information from leadership to field questions and concerns, and provide support and assurance.
Each spokesperson should speak within the framework provided and know how to stay on message, and at least one should be available at any point during and until the crisis is resolved.
Provide customer-facing employees with pre-approved content to answer the most common questions and not to deviate.
Step #5: Identify key stakeholders
Consider the people and groups who may be affected by a crisis. This includes both internal and external audiences, including employees, investors, customers, and the general public. Messages sent to employees should not be the same as sent to customers. Consider the details each group needs to understand the situation and address accordingly.
Step #6: Emergency preparedness plans
Some crises may require emergency management in addition to crisis communication. Ensure emergency preparedness in a crisis communication plan. The emergency preparedness team may have a communication plan in place for employees, so if communicating with external audiences as well, the same emergency notification system can be used to send out the message.