If You Stay Ready, You Won't Have to Get Ready

A major part of strategic communication that is often not as emphasized as other sectors of the field is crisis communication. Many organizations have a reactive approach to a crisis-- meaning that they hastily react to the crisis once it happens-- instead of a proactive approach--meaning they actively evaluate potential threats or issues and have a plan in place to enact when a crisis occurs.

By definition, crisis communication, or strategic crisis management, is a subset of strategic communication designed to protect an organization’s reputation and resolve any public challenges that arise that are a threat to an organization’s reputation. Business crises happen constantly in society, yet very few organizations have a plan in place to deal with these public challenges.

Having a crisis communication plan in place is not only important for the company reputation, but for the company value as well. Knight and Pretty (1997) found that companies that took a reactive stance to crises saw a 10% decrease in their stock price after the first week of a crisis and a 15% decrease in stock price after the first year following a crisis. Companies that took a proactive approach and implemented a strategic crisis management plan, however, saw only a 5% decrease in stock price immediately after a crisis and were able to recovery fully and quickly in the year following the crisis.

So, what does a strategic crisis management plan entail? An effective and strategic crisis communication plan involves three main parts: Pre-crisis evaluation, crisis response, and post-crisis analysis.

Pre-crisis evaluation involves environmental scanning, risk assessment, and crisis preparation (Wooten & James, 2008). Environmental scanning involves identifying any risks, hazards, or issues that could turn into a crisis. Methods of environmental scanning include keeping up with news, facilitating constant communication with executives and stakeholders in an organization, and watching the physical environment and digital realm for possible threats. Establishing notification and monitoring systems, such as setting up alerts on google, social media, and other digital outlets is one of the most effective ways to track any conversation related to the organization.

After environmental scanning, the next part of pre-crisis evaluation is risk assessment. This step involves taking the information gathered in the environmental scanning phase and assessing its risk to the organization. Many crises are able to be avoided if they are dealt with before they become a full blown crisis, such as customer complaints via social media. If the organization sees the complaint during environmental scanning and assesses it as a possible risk, the organization can respond effectively and alleviate further staturmoil with that issue.

After environmental scanning and risk assessment, the organization should commence crisis preparation by having a plan in place for communication during any anticipated crisis. According to Berstein Crisis Management, it is imperative during this step to establish a crisis communication team, identify and coach a selected spokesperson (or a select few spokespeople), identify possible communication outlets to use, and develop holding statements specific to the organization to disseminate immediately after a crisis hits. While full communication messages will be specific to the crisis once it occurs, holding messages can be drafted in advance as a company’s initial response to a crisis outbreak; these statements should simply assure audience members that the organization is now aware of the crisis and working to resolve it. An example of a holding statement for a hotel would be, “We have implemented our crisis response plan, which places the highest priority on the health and safety of our guests and staff.” Pre-crisis evaluation often promotes more effective communication and preparedness when a crisis does arise.

When a crisis does occur, the next step in strategic crisis management plan is the crisis response. While there are numerous methods for responding to a crisis and different communication outlets to use depending on the nature of the crisis, Hubspot identifies three main components that should be apparent in every crisis response plan: 1) Admit and accept responsibility for wrongdoing, 2) Update your audiences early and often, and 3) be transparent. Silence is never an effective response to a crisis and often has the potential to do more harm than good in a crisis situation. Even if the organization is not initially sure of the depth of the crisis, they should ensure audiences that they are actively pursuing and investigating the crisis and keep audiences updated on progressions throughout the crisis.

Social media is often the go-to method of response dissemination during a crisis. This emerging media is able to reach large amounts of audiences in short amounts of time due to its viral nature. This allows organizations to relay information and messages quickly and effectively to target audience members. Other traditional methods of communication, such as television press conferences, posting videos on the company website, and print news releases, are also effective in disseminating information, but they lack the quick-pace spreading nature of social media. For certain crises, however, such as an internal school situation or company situation that only needs to reach specific people, social media would not be the most effective response outlet. This is why it is important to know the nature of the crisis and the audience involved in the crisis before choosing the most effective method for responding.

Once the dust settles, the final piece of an effective strategic crisis management plan is post-crisis analysis. This step involves evaluating what was done well and what could have been done better during the crisis. It also involves evaluating what the organization learned from the occurrence and how the organization can ensure that a crisis of that same nature does not occur again.

Many organizations do not spend much time or effort on crisis communication due to the “it can never happen to us” mentality. Organizations tend to think situations will not happen within their business... until they do. While an organization cannot prepare for every single crisis that may occur, learning from crises that have occurred in your organization as well as other organizations and having a strategic plan in place for effective crisis communication ensures that whenever a crisis does occur, the organization will be ready to respond proactively and strategically.