Crisis Communication

Management
Definition of Crisis
Any situation that is threatening or could threaten to harm people or property, seriously interrupt
business, significantly damage reputation and/or negatively impact the bottom line.
What Crisis?
• Every organization is vulnerable to crises.

• The days of playing ostrich – burying your head in the sand and hoping the problem goes
away – are gone.

• You can try, but your stakeholders will not be understanding or forgiving because they’ve
watched what happened with Tiger Woods, Volkswagen, FIFA, and Lance Armstrong.
 Damage Caused by Crisis
• If you don’t prepare, you will incur more damage.

• Organizational leadership often does not understand that in the absence of adequate
internal and external communications:

• Operational response will break down

• Stakeholders will not know what is happening and quickly become confused, angry, and
negatively reactive

• The organization will be perceived as inept, at best, and criminally negligent, at worst.

• The length of time required to bring full resolution to the issue will be extended, often
dramatically.

• The impact to the financial and reputational bottom line will be more severe.
Does your company has Crisis
management Plan?
Why Crisis management is Important?
Crises are unpredictable, but should not be unexpected
Since crisis events are generally a surprise, planning is vital because you likely will have a short
response time
Protect reputation, market share, competitive edge, investor confidence and the long term
health of the org.
Role of In House Counsel
Educate, educate, and then educate some more
◦ Counsel must educate management and the board of directors that no business is immune from a crisis
◦ Lobby management to implement and commit resources ($$$) to a crisis management plan
Role of in House Counsel
Preparation of a crisis management plan is going to involve costs
Provide cost-benefit analysis to upper management
When undertaking your risk audit, think about how many days (or weeks) your company might
be unable to operate per each potential crisis
Planning for Crisis
The basic steps of effective crisis communications are not difficult, but they require advance
work in order to minimize damage.
Role in House counsel
Think about and estimate lost business per day/per site
Analyze potential losses related to:
◦ Business opportunities
◦ Reduction in market share
◦ Customer confidence
◦ Brand/reputation impact
Prepare Crisis Management Plan.
◦ Strategize regarding the kinds of crisis that may impact your company
◦ Undertake a risk audit
◦ Develop a crisis management team
◦ Develop an agreed upon crisis response philosophy with senior management
Potential Corporate Crisis
Product recall or product safety issues
Potential Corporate Crisis
Attacks by consumer advocacy groups
Potential Corporate Crisis
Serious injuries involving your product or service
Potential Corporate Structure
Major infrastructure failure/supply chain disruption
Potential Corporate Crisis
Executives or officers are indicted or arrested
Potential Corporate Crisis
Natural Disaster
Potential Corporate Crisis
A whistleblower
employee
 10 Steps of Crisis Communication Planning

POST-CRISIS
PRE-CRISIS
8. Assess the Crisis Situation
1. Anticipate Crises
9. Finalize and Adapt Key Messages
2. Identify Your Crisis Communications Team
10. Post-Crisis Analysis
3. Identify and Train Spokespersons

4. Spokesperson Training

5. Establish Notification and Monitoring Systems

6. Identify and Know Your Stakeholders

7. Develop Holding Statements

Risk Audit
 What could disrupt our business?
 Short Term disruptions
 Long Term disruptions
 Look to your comparators
 Review and analyze past crises
 Identify your vulnerabilities
 Risk Audit
 Financial
 Strategic
 Operational
 Compliance
 Reputational
Crisis Management Team
 Who should be on the team?
 A well thought out team should include:
 Management
 Legal
 Operations
 IT
 Public relations
 Human resources
 Business units
Prepare Your Plan
Crisis management team should have good understanding of all
aspects of the company and business
Depending on team configuration, each team member may report on
their area of the business or prepare a fact sheet
Utilize discoveries from the risk audit to determine probable
scenarios to prepare for
 Prepare Your Plan
Brainstorm and role play
 Design is important
Assign other team members as a Devil’s
Advocate committee  Easy to read type
 Understandable sub headings
Contemplate and address the worst case
scenarios  Index
 Flow Charts
Prioritize
 Lists
 Contemplate having a first hour check list
Prepare Your Plan
Include and maintain information on major projects in-progress
Assign team members’ responsibilities
Detailed contact information for team members and other important individuals (outside
counsel, insurance, utility companies for a site
Prepare Your Plan
Incorporate your company’s vision and ethical standards into your plan
Develop and prepare your response to the crises that you have identified:
◦ A product recall
◦ An injury due to your product/service
◦ A visit by law enforcement
◦ A weather event
Prepare Your Plan
Develop crisis communication plan
◦ You will need an internal crisis communication team
◦ Assign a person to communicate internally to employees
◦ Make sure to have a back up person
◦ Communicate accurate information to employees in a timely manner
Prepare Your Plan
Develop crisis communication plan
◦ Take charge of communication quickly but cautiously
◦ Consider making a preliminary statement
◦ Understand the facts and the situation before making a more detailed
statement
◦ Understand the dynamic between admissions and future litigation
◦ Be aware of and monitoring social media
◦ Be prepared to address any past issue
Prepare Your Plan
Develop crisis communication plan
◦ Understand who will likely be your audience in a crisis situation
◦ Employees
◦ News media
◦ Site neighbors
◦ Community Leaders
◦ Elected official
◦ Customers
◦ Stockholders and financial coummunity
Prepare Your Plan
Develop crisis communication plan
◦ Communications during a crisis should be calm, organized and factual
◦ Establish a predetermined communication center (and a back-up)
◦ Establish telephone answering procedures for directing media and emergency
inquiries to the appropriate people
◦ Establish an internal system for communicating with employees
Prepare Your Plan
Develop crisis communication plan
◦ Develop positive messages for your crisis response
◦ Safety record
◦ Family owned
◦ Community and charitable giving
◦ Be certain employees know who the authorized spoke person is and they further should be trained to
not respond to media
Prepare Your Plan
Develop crisis communication plan
◦ Act FAST – the media will mobilize quickly
◦ Make the media aware that you want to be helpful and cooperative
◦ But, do not speculate
◦ Maintain contact information for media
◦ Schedule additional updates both for the media and employees
Prepare Your Plan
Develop crisis communication plan
◦ Be aware and appropriate if crisis has caused death, injury, environmental damage
◦ Providing some media statement is better than not talking
◦ Do not provide “off the record” or “no comment” statement
◦ Do tell the truth
◦ Continue to be accessible and responsive
Prepare Your Plan
Integrate your crisis management plan into your company policies and procedures
Train your employees
Practice for an emergency
Update your plan on a regular basis
Hold crisis management team meetings
 Summary
Potential Issues can arise…

Audiences:
 Identify & determine their need for information
 Identify who is best able to communicate with that audience

Messages
 Goal: to move from reacting to the incident, to managing a strategy, to overcome the incident
 Aim: to ensure consistency of message
 Pre-scripted: approved but nimble

Action
 Resources are available without much hustle
 Move quickly but surely