Crisis Communications: A Best Practices Primer

By T.L. HEADLEY
ONA, WV – Okay, it is 5:15 on a cold Friday afternoon. As you are leaving the office the phone rings. On the line is a reporter with the local newspaper. She wants to get a comment on the coal slurry spill from one of your company’s coal mines that is polluting a stream, threatening drinking water for several thousand homes and killing fish.
This is the first you had heard of the spill and there is no one in the office to ask.
If it were an isolated instance it would be bad enough, but if true it is the fourth major slurry spill into the river in the past year.
The media and the communities along the river are already screaming bloody murder and the issue has drawn national attention.
The reporter says she has an 8 p.m. deadline for the next morning’s edition. You also know you will be getting calls from other newspapers and television media outlets.
How should you handle this situation?
Hopefully, your organization is properly prepared with an established crisis communications plan. If not, now is the time to develop one, not after something like this occurs.
What are the components of a crisis communications plan? How do you start to put one together?
To start, you have to define a crisis.
A crisis is “any situation that is threatening or could threaten to harm people or property, seriously interrupt business or negatively impact stock value.”
Remember, the focus is on being prepared for potential problems and not simply reacting as they occur.
Initially, you should identify your crisis communications team and your primary spokespeople.
Your team should include your organization chief, whether that be the CEO, the senior partner or the owner. The team should also include the organization’s chief financial officer, if one exists, and the chief public relations officer – whether it is an internal or consultant position.  The chief legal counsel should also be included – again, whether an in-house or consultant position.
In larger organizations, the team should also include key organizational division chiefs, such as the director of human resources, and the chief operating officer. If there is a science or environmental advisor that person should be included on the team.
Contrary to common practice in many companies, the CEO should not be the chief spokesperson.
The key should simply be communications ability – the ability to project trust, competence and knowledge.
An important factor to consider is that the team include people who would have an intimate knowledge of potential crises, such as the lead detective in a criminal case or the chief electrician of a mine.
Once you have identified your team and key spokespeople, they should be provided with quality training by a professional communicator.
This training should be regular and in-depth. It should include role-playing, crisis response drills and rude interviews so members of the team have real world experience.
It should be stressed that if your organization does not have in-house public relations training, it should invest in the services of an expert. Also, while an attorney can advise on the law and the CEO can advise on financial requirements, they cannot take the place of a public relations expert.
The next step is to determine your organization’s communications protocols.
This should include development of a 24-hour “on-call” rotation so that someone is always available to talk to the media and the public if necessary.
Also, team members should be equipped with 24-hour contact capability, including cell phones, pagers and e-mail.
The crisis communications team list and contact information should be distributed throughout the organization and posted in all offices. Training should be provided to staff as to how to utilize the list as well as the basics of media relations.
The next step is to identify and know your audiences.
A partial list should include customers and potential customers, investors, the media, government agencies, the general public and your creditors.
After you have identified your team and your audiences, you should perform a “crisis inventory” – essentially a brainstorming session for a team to identify potential crises.
As you identify potential crises, they should be rated by likelihood of occurrence – essentially a threat matrix.
Best and worst case scenarios for each situation should be developed and from that additional needed members of the crisis team can be identified.
Once potential crises are identified the team can develop possible responses for each crisis.
An example would be a large layoff – the response to which could be a message such as follows:
“In the face of unfair international trade, our company is being forced to take drastic measures. In order to protect the majority of our jobs, we are being forced to cut costs, reduce inventory, purchasing and non-essential staff. We regret these actions. We understand the hardship this will bring to some of our employees, but we will do whatever is necessary to defend our company and our community.”
One step in developing a proper crisis inventory is to hold regular information collection interviews with mid- to lower-level employees.
These interviews should be conducted as if the interviewer was a “beat reporter.” Depending on the size of the organization, a minimum of 10 to 20 interviews should be conducted from across the spectrum of the organization. The interviews must be confidential.
Interviewers should look for potentially harmful trends, inconsistencies among respondents or consensus that something is likely to be a problem.
During this process, it may be possible to identify “loose cannons” and communications “bottlenecks.”
From this information, you should be able to develop a quality crisis communications plan.