A Summarised Guide To Crisis Communication For Corporates

by Purvi Dalvi Writer

Crisis refers to an unexpected disturbance which not only causes harm to the organisation but also triggers a feeling of fear and uncertainty amongst the individuals involved in the company. It threatens the ability of the company to operate their business effectively and might hamper the growth in the industry.

What is a Crisis communication Plan?

A crisis communication plan refers to technologies, systems, and protocols that enable an organisation to communicate during an emergency situation effectively. Organisations should know that getting hyper is such situations doesn’t work, but instead, having a plan ready is essential. A step by step approach towards rational strategies and open communications work best during emergencies. In simple terms, a crisis plan is any plan devised by superiors, members of a crisis management team or related employees to help the organisation overcome its crisis in the best possible way.

What is the need for Crisis communication plan?

A pre-planned crisis communication strategy helps the employees to adopt a focused approach to emergency situations.
A company needs pre-planned strategies to define roles and responsibilities of the employees during a crisis. It will contain the details of the actions to be taken by the management as well as the employees to save an organisation’s reputation.
Having a plan in place will reduce instability and uncertainty amongst the employees, and help them stay focused on their work.

What are the elements in a Crisis communication plan?

Crisis communication team:

The team is responsible for collecting information, creating and disseminating key messages and working with the media. The team is also in charge of creating communication strategies which monitor the response to the crisis.

Detailed planning:

A well-structured plan will outline the basics of how they would communicate about the crisis to the employees, and later how to handle the emergency.

It will include the purpose of the plan, activation criteria and procedures outlined with regard to internal and external communication.

Internal communication procedures:

Once a crisis occurs, the management should be prepared with a comprehensive crisis communication plan. The plan must explain how everyone should conduct themselves and deal with the classified information. Employees also should be made aware of organisation’s media policy and the amount of data to be shared with the world.

Key messages:

The organisation must consider all kinds of crisis while drafting the plan. It should also include the key messages for a response to the internal and external factors of the organisation. Run these announcements by the appropriate managers as well as your organisation’s legal team to work out any issues ahead of time.

Follow up:

Once the brunt of the crisis is over, and everything is settled down, look at the documentation and prepare a brief report. Outline the causes of the crisis, how it was handled, successes and failures, recommendations for change, and things to avoid in the future.