Learning Objectives
Managing
your reputation with good crisis communication
Definitions:
Crisis communication
Reputation Management
1. How to prepare for a crisis?
The first task is to identify crisis risks or to recognize a crisis when
it breaks out.
From a communications standpoint, a crisis is a business or
organizational problem that is exposed to public attention, and that threatens
a company’s reputation and its ability to conduct business.
A crisis can take on many forms, including natural or man-made
disasters, environmental spills, product tampering or recalls, labour
disruptions or criminal acts, to name a few. What makes them a crisis is the
fact that they are the focus of intense media scrutiny.
Although some risks are beyond a company’s control, others can be
foreseen. Research shows that the vast majority of crises arise when companies
fail to identify a potentially contentious issue at an earlier, more benign,
stage, and to develop a plan of action to manage the issue before the issue manages
them.
An issue can fester for months, maybe years, until events and
circumstances intersect and propel it to centre stage on the public agenda. In
some cases, an issue may have been badly handled, and as a result, has
escalated to the brink of becoming a crisis. Examples include:
·
A major pharmaceutical company recalls a product that
has proven to have adverse side effects. Relentless media attention reveals
that the company had known for years about scientific studies that questioned
those side effects.
·
A brokerage firm, steeped in its own male macho
culture, routinely subjects female employees to embarrassing or degrading
working conditions, and ignores the most reasonable of complaints, until an
employee launches a lawsuit and gains the support of women’s organizations
nationwide.
·
A company’s blue-chip board, having confidence in its
high-profile CEO, rubber-stamps his recommendations, until a whistle-blower
reveals shenanigans within the company that lead to a special audit and an OSC
investigation.
A coordinated approach to issues management can help an organization
effectively identify and anticipate potential issues, prevent crises from
developing, and influence their evolution and outcome.
The first step is to conduct an issues audit? an inventory of a
company’s vulnerabilities and the critical issues it is likely to confront. The
task for companies in highly regulated sectors, like energy or pharmaceuticals,
is more obvious than for other, less visible enterprises.
Within the company, a series of interviews with senior management is
conducted. Business plans, processes, relationships and previous experience are
analyzed. Key contacts in the industry, media and oversight functions are
identified, and existing communications plans inspected for relevance.
Outside the company, media analysis, legislative tracking, industry
reports, polls and surveys all help to bring potential threats to the surface.
Once a framework is established, the critical issues should be
identified and prioritized in order of magnitude and likelihood of occurrence.
After the communications audit is complete, an issues manual is
developed. This document details critical issues, the history and context of
company involvement with them, and the company’s position on each one. If the
issues have seeped into the public domain at any point, the level of visibility
should be described, and allies and adversaries identified.
Some examples of issues that faced companies in recent years and
escalated into crises include:
·
Canadians’ penchant for bank-bashing was the context
in which the country’s major banks unsuccessfully attempted to merge with each
other;
·
Advocacy groups raised red flags about unknown risks
in producing and consuming genetically modified organisms before GMO-based
products were sprung on the market;
·
Heavy industrial emitters knew of Canada’s intention
to ratify the ill-conceived Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change years before they
expressed their views on its economic impact;
·
Labour groups and others had been advocating better
working conditions in the Third World before ethical sourcing became a
mainstream concern for retailers.
Creating a
crisis communications plan
The issues audit becomes the front end of a company’s crisis
communications plan, and arguably, the most important document in the plan. As
a complement to a company’s emergency procedures, the crisis plan should
contain detailed communications response procedures in the event that any of
the potential crises identified in the communications audit, or unforeseen
external events, come to pass.
The following is a checklist of the contents of a good crisis
communications plan:
·
Names and contact information of the crisis team/
spokespeople. People need to know who holds responsibility for leading the
organization through the crisis.
·
Crisis triage. Understanding what level of “crisis”
you’re facing. Establishing criteria to decide when a minor incident has the
potential to become a national crisis can be a challenge.
·
” First response. What information has top priority?
How will you initially respond to media?
·
Alert/ notification procedures. Who needs to get
information, and in what order of priority? By phone, e-mail, pager or fax?
·
Situation room. Assess the physical space that will be
the nerve centre for managing the crisis, including the required hardware and
software, staffing, location and layout.
·
Stakeholder communications. How do you plan to
communicate with customers, shareholders, employees, government and the media?
·
Contact lists. Include the “inputs (which media
outlets and Internet message boards should be monitored, which opinion leaders
should be kept track of, etc.) and “outputs” (which journalists should be
contacted, which newspapers and television programs should be approached, which
media outlets need to hear your story).
·
Template responses. Standardized format, language and
protocol for all communications.
Access to the crisis plan is essential. Many companies now maintain both
print and electronic versions for ease of access and remote retrieval.
Testing the plan
In order to ensure that the messages contained in the crisis plan are
delivered effectively and with credibility, and that the plan can be carried
out, it needs to be tested. This is where crisis training and simulations come
in, as well as media training.
Crisis training is best delivered by outside trainers who take
participants through crisis theory and its practical applications to their
industry or company. The crisis plan is reviewed and implemented in a simulated
crisis to assess the organization’s preparedness, and to identify areas that
need improvement. Did the crisis response, when played out, escalate or solve
the crisis?
2. How to manage crisis?
1. Respect the role of the media. The
media are not the enemy; they have direct access to the audiences you need to
reach. Rather than avoiding media, use them as a conduit to communicate key
messages. Prepare a statement that includes the confirmed facts; communicate
what the company is doing and provide background information.
2. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
The first rule of crisis management is to communicate. Early hours are critical
and they set the tone for the duration of the crisis. The media’s first
questions are likely to be simple and predictable:
·
What happened?
·
Where?
·
When did you know of the
problem?
·
What are you doing about it?
·
Who’s to blame?
·
Were there warning signs?
·
How will life or property be
protected or compensated?
Be as forthright as possible; tell what you
know and when you became aware of it; explain who is involved and what is being
done to fix the situation. Be sure to correct misinformation promptly when it
emerges.
·
In the aftermath of the 9/11
tragedy, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani held a press conference in the ruins
of Lower Manhattan that afternoon. In the coming days, he became the reassuring
voice of calm for worried residents of the city.
·
In the hours, days and
months after the 1998 crash of Swissair 111 in Nova Scotia, the Transportation
Safety Board of Canada held a series of media updates on the status of the
crash investigation, and provided regular safety alerts to the international
aviation community.
·
When Pepsi-Cola heard first
reports of syringes being found in soft drink bottles in 1993 — which turned
out to be hoaxes — it launched a broad communications offensive to reassure
consumers. Tactics included media relations and interviews, company open
houses, video news releases, third-party endorsement and consumer hotlines.
Remaining silent or appearing removed, perhaps
on the advice of legal counsel, tends to enrage the public and other
stakeholders. A balanced communications strategy must be developed that
protects corporate liability while satisfying the demands of today’s
information and media dynamic.
As demanding as the public may be, they are
usually inclined to give an organization the benefit of the doubt in the early
hours of a crisis. They judge a company and its leaders not by the incident
itself — which they recognize is often beyond the control of those individuals
— but by their response.
3. Take responsibility. One of the more
controversial tenets of crisis management is that someone involved in a crisis
must be prepared to empathize, even publicly apologize, for the events that
have transpired. This is different from accepting blame. Taking responsibility
means communicating what an organization is doing to remedy a situation that
the media and the public have determined involve that organization in some way.
4. Centralize information. A company
needs to move quickly to gain control over information and the resolution of
the crisis. Ensure that appropriate levels of management are updated with
information from a wide variety of sources (media coverage, analyst comments,
competitive intelligence, managers’ first-hand reports, etc.).
5. Establish a crisis team. Create and
train the crisis team before a crisis strikes, and establish a situation room.
During a crisis, when everyone goes into action, be sure the team has access to
the highest levels of management.
6. “Plan for the worst; hope for the best.”
Assume the worst-case scenario. Develop contingencies for the hours and days
ahead, forecast possible consequences and determine plans of action.
7. Communicate with employees. Remember
that employees are your front-line “ambassadors” in a crisis. Be sure they are
aware of what the company is doing to deal with the situation.
8. Third parties. Use third parties to
speak on your behalf. Third parties act as character witnesses and often carry
more credibility than the organization at the centre of a crisis.
9. Use research to determine responses.
Polling, market research and focus groups provide essential insight into the
magnitude of a crisis and public attitudes about where hidden issues may lie.
Monitor the Internet, chat rooms and blogs.
10. Create a website – If circumstances
warrant, create a website to give quick, up-to-the-minute information and get
the company’s story out.
3. How to manage your reputation after the crisis?
As the crisis comes under control,
a company should examine the impact the incident has had on its brand(s) and
reputation. If the brand has taken a hit, a company may need to give consumers
a reason to trust them again.
Companies should consider a broad
range of potential communication initiatives to restore trust and loyalty.
·
Following a
recall of millions of cases of beer that may have contained a few bottles
tainted with caustic cleaning material, a major brewery ran ads in newspapers
across Canada, assuring consumers the problem was rectified and offering them
coupons redeemable for a free beer.
·
A major
appliance company weathered controversy following the closure of a
manufacturing facility that saw hundreds lose their jobs. The company ran a
major public relations and advertising campaign to remind customers that it
continued to have an active presence in the country, and was here for the long
haul.
·
An
international mining company seeks to restore normalcy to an overseas site that
has been occupied by demonstrators and attracted an international backlash. The
company begins a real effort at stakeholder communications and engagement,
learning to work with its staunchest critics.
An entire arsenal of public
relations techniques can be called upon, from media relations, internal
communications, and thought-leadership initiatives to comprehensive corporate
social responsibility programs.
Public opinion surveys can track
changes in attitudes towards a company in the weeks and months after
reputation-focused programs are launched.
Sources
