When a crisis hits, whether it’s a catastrophic weather event, geopolitical conflict, pandemic or business issue, there’s often little time to react and no time to prepare. That’s why companies and brands should dedicate time to planning and preparing for potential crises rather than being caught flat footed and scrambling to catch up.
The Linhart PR Crisis Communications Team guides clients through a 10-step framework that helps organizations and teams plan more thoughtfully, manage more effectively and resolve crises more quickly:
- Consider your company culture. Begin by gaining clarity on your own values, mission and what you stand for, to help avoid crisis response actions or decisions that are not aligned with your purpose, or which could lead to a crisis in itself.
- Recognize stakeholder perspectives. Understand and respect your stakeholders (external and internal) and what they care about, using research or focus groups where necessary, to ensure you don't unknowingly take steps or make decisions that conflict with stakeholder values, causing or exacerbating a crisis.
- Analyze brand and business risks. Assess your risks and vulnerabilities and realize how those are balanced by your strengths.
- Benefit from past experience. Learn from your peers by examining crises they have faced, what they did well and where they may have fallen short in their responses.
- Conduct a crisis analysis. Make a specific inventory of potential crisis situations and prioritize those that are most likely and would have the greatest impact on reputation and trust.
- Involve key internal stakeholders. Convene a Crisis Preparedness and Response Team and determine how to address the high-impact, high-likelihood scenarios – including roles and responsibilities, decision-making and information flows within the organization, as the foundation for your crisis response plan.
- Establish communication channels. Identify your target audiences and determine how to reach them quickly and effectively in the event of a crisis, not just initially but over time; consider the use of technologies such as integrated news and social media monitoring platforms, messaging apps such as Slack or mass notification systems using SMS or push technology.
- Craft scenario-based messages. Develop template response messages and materials for the high-impact, high-likelihood scenarios.
- Build external relationships. Work in advance on building – or improving, if needed – relationships and understanding with community partners you may need in the event of a crisis, including first responders, local elected officials and others.
- Practice, practice, practice. Review your crisis response plan at least annually, and conduct crisis simulation training for your Crisis Preparedness and Response Team, to stress-test and improve the response plan and ensure everyone understands roles and responsibilities.
Like anything else in business, a company or brand’s success in handling a crisis depends on thorough planning, preparation and practice. By thinking strategically about potential solutions, impacts and messages and how they'll be received by key stakeholders to move toward resolution and prevent escalation, companies will have a leg up on the crisis, enabling quicker and more effective responses in order to protect brand and business reputation while preserving trust.
