Industry Analysis

“If you lose dollars for the firm, I will be understanding. If you lose reputation for the firm, I will be ruthless.” Warren Buffett

Damage to reputation matters. Planning for a crisis can easily be pushed down the list of priorities. In some organisations, a crisis strategy is discussed and then left to gather dust. In others, crisis comms is not seen as necessary at all. However, a PR crisis can happen to anyone at any time. Some industries, where day to day business is closely connected with people’s health and safety, such as aviation, food manufacture, or construction might be the first that spring to mind when it comes to thinking about crisis. But no industry is immune. Damaging issues can spring from anything, from financial difficulties or actions of a disgruntled employee, to the departure of a board member. If you and your organisation are not prepared, the consequences can be brutal.

If you’re at a loss at where to begin with putting together or re-evaluating a strategy then start with the three Ps: predict, prepare, practice.

Predict Remember, you can’t talk yourself out of a situation you behaved yourself in to. So think about how your business behaves before the effluent hits the fan. By predicting the worse case scenarios, you’ll be much better placed to handle a crisis if it develops.

• Start by looking at your organisation’s objectives. The easiest way to identify risks is to examine the corporate goals and the possible pitfalls in achieving these.
• Create a list of threats and then start to group or rank them in terms of impact. For example the severity of damage to reputation or sales, whether the crisis would be long-term/short-term, and the likelihood of it happening.
• For each risk, clarify at what stage it becomes a crisis. This will enable you to develop a warning system so that you can diffuse a situation before it becomes a real threat to your company.
• Be realistic about the possible risks and the actions you will need to take to deal with any issues.

Prepare Making sure you’ve done all the donkeywork beforehand will be a lifesaver when a crisis erupts.

• Have a crisis management ‘team’ in place so everyone knows who does what from the day trouble starts. This must include senior management. Be scrupulous about keeping contact details up to date.
• Create template holding statements to cover a range of situations. These will give you vital thinking time.
• Have a basic folder of company information including standard photos, boilerplate biography, any relevant film footage etc.
• Update all company websites regularly.

Practice The best way to test your crisis management plan is to put it into action.

• Come up with credible crisis scenarios for the team to deal with.
• Anyone who could be called on to act in a real crisis should be involved – this includes anyone who may have to take over if the main people are ill or away.
• Once the exercise is over, assess the successes and failures as a team.
• Make any necessary tweaks to your plan.

Remember: creating a crisis comms plan is not a one-off process. Review and renew your crisis communications management strategy regularly.

Look out for our next post on how these plans can be translated into actions.