How do you develop a crisis communication plan and strategy?

It is indeed an essential step to identify and anticipate for situations that could potentially turn into crisis, which in my opinion will lead to preparations of emergency response plans for those specific situations; however, a crisis will usually happen where/when it is not anticipated. Although pandemic crisis is always in the list of potential scenarios, but it seems very few were prepared for COVID-19! The conclusion in my opinion would be that crisis cannot be predicted and when it does happen, the normal business activities are disrupted, and resources become inadequate. Preparation phase could be best focused on how to handle such a situation.

Identifying potential crises is the first step in crisis management. This involves assessing risks such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, product recalls, legal disputes or scandals using a risk matrix. Prioritizing these threats is essential to allocate resources efficiently. In addition, it is crucial to consider the needs of internal and external audiences, as effective communication plays a crucial role in crisis management. In summary, crisis identification is fundamental to minimize the impact and protect the organization's reputation, ensuring a strategic and effective response.

You need to understand what is a crisis that requires you to shut off marketing and media activity. That needs a process that shows escalation and ownership across your own team and agency partners. A book of scenarios is required and everyone know what to do.

Developing a crisis communication plan and strategy involves several critical steps : - Anticipate Possible Emergencies: You need to identify potential crises that might affect your organization. - Prepare a Crisis Plan: This should include a list of key members of your crisis management team, their responsibilities, and contact information. - Train a Designated Spokesperson: This person will interact with the media and handle all inquiries during a crisis. They should be well-trained to ensure consistent messaging. - Set Up a News Center: A well-equipped center provides necessary information to the media quickly and efficiently. Remember, the simpler the plan, the better !

It's also important to distinguish between an issue and a crisis. A crisis is something that materially affects your organisation's right or ability to operate

A missing piece here is the role of marketing in a crisis function. In today's world where information consumption is increasingly happening predominantly through digital channels, the public relations or communications team often does not 'own' the keys to those channels. Engaging the marketing team and educating them ahead of time on crisis dynamics, objectives and KPIs for their channels can be critical to ensure a smooth workflow in a crisis situation. Separately, defining the decision-making process is critical. There's no way to capture all of the potential scenarios that might arise for a company, so while scenario planning for top-tier risks is important decision-making clarity around how to handle situations outside those is key.

Establishing a crisis team and roles is a critical component of any effective crisis management and prevention strategy. The collaboration and coordination of a well-structured team can make all the difference in the successful resolution of critical situations. By dedicating time and resources to preparedness, organizations can significantly improve their ability to meet and overcome unexpected challenges. In summary, a strong crisis team and a clear distribution of roles and responsibilities are key elements in crisis management, enabling organizations to respond effectively, protect their reputation and minimize the negative impact on their operations.

If your crisis communications team is not properly trained, the lawyer will often take over the strategy, which almost always will lead to a much worse result with stakeholders. Well-trained leaders will know to keep the lawyer in the Court of Law lane and out of the Court of Public Opinion lane. I see this regularly in my crisis communications work and I discuss the issue in detail in my trainings. As an attorney, I respect the need to mitigate liability but winning in the Court of Law while losing in the Court of Public Opinion is still losing.

My former public health communications director Doc Kokol had the exceptional foresight to assemble a crisis communications team (using ICS structure) to actively lead messaging efforts during/outside public health and other emergencies, beginning with the 2009 H1N1 response. My team and I focused on all-things messaging for our central office and 67 county health department PIOs (products included media advisories, news releases, talking points, fact sheets, Q & As, presentations, website, call center scripts, PSA scripts, etc.), posting approved templates to an internal portal for their use. This crisis section of the larger communications team frees up a communications director, press secretary, others to focus on issues at their level.

It is important to also think about back-up people to fulfill the roles if the first choice person is not available. Crises never happen at 10am on a Tues morning when your diary is light. Think about how you would cope if a crisis hit on Christmas Day, at 3am or when the CEO is on a transatlantic flight. Would you be able to get the sign offs you need? Would you be able to reach all the relevant post holders to mobilise the team? Also, if you are a global organisation, think about where your spokespeople are based? Do you have people that can communicate with the media in the local language? If you have a 'dream team' are you going to fly them out to the location? How long will that take and what will happen to the comms in the meantime?

In addition to key messages, it is essential to prepare supporting materials to support communication during the crisis. The development of key messages and materials plays an essential role in crisis management and prevention. Effective communication during critical situations not only helps maintain audience trust, but also allows the organization to address the crisis more efficiently and minimize its negative impact. Careful preparation, empathetic communication and timely delivery of key messages and materials are key elements of successful crisis management. By investing time and resources in this phase, organizations can be better prepared to deal with unexpected challenges.

Your first message will not be your only message. Let your audiences know your engaged, aware and will communicate as much as possible during the crisis. Let them know you’re not hiding. Make sure you don’t forget any of your audiences.

A lot of time people will push back on this one because how can you agree on what you will say before the thing happens. Remind the naysayers that these are the key messages and materials to get you through the first 24-48 hours at least, and that certain messages (such as an empathy message) are going to be fairly universal. Don't let people get wrapped around the need to be specific or detailed.

n our commitment to effective crisis management, crafting precise and empathetic messages is paramount. We've meticulously developed key messages aligned with our organization's position, actions, and values. These messages prioritize consistency, accuracy, and timeliness to address the concerns and questions of our diverse audiences. Complementing our messages, we've prepared a comprehensive set of materials, including press releases, statements, FAQs, and fact sheets. These resources serve to provide detailed information and context, ensuring stakeholders have a nuanced understanding of our response during a crisis.

As mensagens-chave são a tradução maior da estratégia. Devem ser claras a ponto de qualquer ser humano médio entender. Devem ser verdadeiras, igualmente. Devem estar apoiadas em Q&As e em porta-vozes treinados. E lembrem-se: em crises, geralmente, a maior parte do trabalho é reduzir danos e ter paciência e persistência para fazer com que sua narrativa ganhe corpo e hegemonia.

In crisis management, evaluation and continuous improvement are vital. The fourth step involves periodically verifying and updating your plan and strategy to ensure its effectiveness and relevance. This is achieved through simulations and exercises that evaluate the skills, coordination and response time of the crisis team. In addition, constant monitoring of the environment and feedback from audiences allows for the identification of emerging issues and deficiencies in the plan. In turn, it is essential to adapt the plan and strategy based on lessons learned from previous crises and best practices from other organizations. Constant preparation strengthens resilience and protects the integrity of the organization.

The fourth step is to test and update your plan and strategy regularly to make sure they are effective and relevant. You can conduct simulations, drills or exercises to assess the skills, coordination and response time of your crisis team. You can also monitor the external environment and feedback from your audiences to identify any emerging issues or gaps in your plan and strategy. You should also review and revise your plan and strategy based on lessons learned from previous crises or best practices from other organizations.

It is so important to train and exercise your communication professionals, and your plan. A Public Information Officer and Public Relations Professional encompass many of the same skillsets, however, they are different in some respects. The PIO/PAO has emergency preparedness, response capabilities, disaster experience in their toolkit - which a pr professional could benefit from. And the pr professional's experience in the private sector could help the PIO/PAO. Learning about, how to work within the Incident Command System (ICS) can help you function greater in/outside of emergency issues, regardless of where you work. Ask your public or private sector partner to share their plan; update yours - then train on, exercise it for effectiveness.

It's amazing how quickly a great crisis comms plan can unravel when you put it into practice. People need to see how their role fits into the overall picture and that can only happen when you run practice sessions. In my experience senior execs are always surprised by how much time they need to devote to comms in a crisis scenario. Running practice sessions makes it clear for them and helps to ensure you end up with a robust plan that will actually work in the event it needs to be rolled out. Just be careful to let everyone in the organisation know that a crisis scenario is going to be practiced. In one organsiation I worked with they didn't do this and our practice was soon derailed by employees wanting to know what was happening!

Ensuring the continual effectiveness of our crisis management plan is a top priority. Regular testing and updates are integral components of our strategy. We conduct simulations and drills to evaluate our crisis team's skills, coordination, and response time. This proactive approach allows us to identify areas for improvement and refine our processes. Monitoring the external environment and gathering feedback from our audiences is equally crucial. This ongoing assessment helps us identify emerging issues and potential gaps in our plan and strategy. By staying attuned to the concerns and expectations of our stakeholders, we can adapt our approach to effectively address evolving challenges.

In crisis management, executing and evaluating the plan and strategy is a fundamental pillar. The fifth step involves activating the crisis team and rigorously following the established protocols. In addition, proactive and transparent communication with audiences must be maintained, choosing the appropriate channels and tone. Constant monitoring of the situation and media coverage is essential. This will allow adjusting messages and materials as the crisis evolves. Evaluating the effectiveness and results of the strategy is key. Identifying areas for improvement and recognition helps refine the response in future crises.

Having a plan and process in place is essential to facilitate the speed and clarity of your response. Crises can happen at any time, not just in working hours, and often blow up quickly on social media, so you don't want to be scrabbling around trying to work out who needs to sign off on statements when your up against it.

Constant and consistent communication with your team during the crisis is critical. Understand that the fog of a crisis can consume you so make sure to, as much as possible, take a deep breath to reassess the situation.

When a crisis occurs, implement your plan, determine who should respond and how, and monitor the response from the public, which could include employees, clients or the media. The aim is to eventually achieve recovery, asking yourself whether publicity is in your best interest or not. Throughout the process, ensure consistency in your brand's messaging.

Information management is essential in a crisis of any kind. It is therefore necessary to design a communication plan detailing the message to be disseminated, how employees, customers, suppliers and the media will be informed, who will be the company's spokesperson and how internal and external communications will be managed. Once the plan is in place, it is important to review and modify it according to the evolution of the risks, the organization and the communication needs.

Even the perfect crisis management and crisis communications plan can be thwarted if you do not create a target rich environment whereby you've identified all of the channels in both traditional media and new media that you need to be communicating on. Not every community has four TV stations or a daily newspaper. Talk to the locals on the ground and gain an understanding of how the community accesses information. In smaller communities you may be limited to a weekly newspaper. In some instances, it's advisable to create your own channel or channels using social media to tell your own story on an as needed basis. To communicate effectively you have to know your audience, and that means knowing when, where, and how they access information.

In my experience, crisis communications strategies are invaluable… until you’re facing a fiasco so bizarre that it’s not in the textbooks and you have to rewrite all the rules on the fly. These situations are rare, but if you were in the hot seat, would you be ready? The pillars of crisis comms plans are well known. But how many strategies include, for instance, scenario planning for the aftermath of a CEO who invites his mistress and his wife to the company’s national convention and while there, stages his wife’s murder as a suicide in their hotel room? My point is that there is a limit to crisis preparation. Good crisis communicators work a plan they’ve made; great crisis communicators make a plan when there isn’t one.

Remember, a crisis communications plan is a living document that should be regularly reviewed, updated, and tested to ensure its effectiveness. Being prepared and having a well-defined plan in place will help your organization respond more effectively and minimize the potential damage caused by a crisis.

Review your existing policies as part of crisis planning. Key policies that are often overlooked but crucial in the face of a crisis are your communications and media policies, insurance policies, personnel policies, and social media policies.

Don't narrow your focus too much to one audience. Planning for and responding to a crisis requires understanding the impact across the entire spectrum of audiences. Over-indexing on one audience (e.g. customers, industry media) can lead you to inadveratently overlook the impact on others (e.g. employees, local media).