Crisis Communication
It takes years to establish a solid reputation... and just moments to ruin it. What Warren Buffet summarized for big business is true for all organizations, no matter which size, no matter if private or public sector. One crisis, badly managed, can jeopardize the existence of your organization.
We help you prepare yourself to respond to any type of crisis, may it be triggered by
- an accident
- a natural disaster
- data breaches and cyber attacks
- terror or crime
- a pandemic (e.g. like SARS or the Coronavirus disease COVID-19)
- a financial crisis
- quality issues
- labour disputes and change situations
- product failures and recalls
- compliance and governance issues
- business continuity issues,
- or other events.
But what actually is a crisis and why cannot it just be "winged"? Here is our take on it: A crisis is a situation that occurs suddenly or gradually and constitutes an immediate threat to the reputation, operations or safety of people, organizations or the environment. It is characterized by high complexity, time pressure and often sketchy information. Depending on the nature of the crisis it is often accompanied by high public interest. Therefore, a crisis cannot be handled by using standard operating procedures and structures.
Crisis Communication Response Plan
Solid response arrangements need to be well prepared in advance. Depending on the nature of your organization and your risk map we support you in developing exactly the crisis communication response plan you need to effectively respond to any crisis. Our modular concept and our hands-on experience ensures that you will only invest in arrangements that you really need. A crisis communication response plan is based on three major pillars:
Crisis Communication Organization
We help you to develop the structures and procedures you need to immediately respond to any situation that might
arise, scalable to the size and nature of your organization.
We support you in linking the crisis communication component to other crisis management arrangements in your organization in order to ensure a harmonized response.
We develop manuals, checklists and templates you need to get your messages out immediately,
24/7.
Training & Exercises
No one would do a sky dive without proper training and exercising. You would just crash. The same applies to crisis management.
We train you and your staff in how to deal with the media, to make difficult decisions and to understand the needs of your audiences. We conduct exercises with you to make sure that your arrangements are always up to date and your staff can experience hands-on what it is like to respond to a crisis. You can find all our training and exercise modules here.
Crisis Communication Capabilities
We help you to establish the infrastructure and the means you need to effectively communicate in case of a crisis. This includes e.g.
- call-out systems
- relevant social media channels
- media relations
- online communication and dark (emergency) sites
- internal communication channels
- ready to use templates with key messages
- infrastructure for your crisis communication team
- call centres
- family assistance
- logistics (press conference venues, etc.)
- translations
- etc.
If required, we advise you on how to make use of contracted services, e.g. for translation or call centre services
where there are no internal resources available.
In addition, we support you in establishing a sound alarming system to make sure you have all hands on deck as soon as you need them.