Preparing for the Worst: How to Write a Crisis Communications Plan
It’s every organization’s worst nightmare: one minute everything’s fine, the next, you’re in the middle of a messaging crossfire and everything seems to be falling apart fast. The bad news is, this will almost certainly happen to your organization at least once. The good news is, you can respond proactively and calmly to crises in a way that positively affects your reputation for years to come – if you have a crisis communications plan in place.
Why a Crisis Communications Plan Is Essential
I’ve been in crisis situations that included political controversy, civil unrest, public health, natural disasters, hazardous spills and multiple times where everything was literally burning down around us. There were times where the organization has been burned without having a crisis communications plan and times where we’ve been saved by a plan.
When the worst happens, having a well-thought-out crisis communications plan in place can build trust and reassurance internally and externally, help your organization recover and possibly save some lives.
Four Main Benefits of a Crisis Communications Plan:
Minimize Damage: An effective plan helps control the narrative and mitigate reputational damage quickly. Once the worst happens, you have limited time to control the narrative – sometimes a few hours, sometimes only minutes. After that window closes, others will control the narrative for you, and you may never recover. Instead of being able to demonstrate your organization's leadership in response to the crisis, you’re stuck chasing misinformation.
Maintain Trust: Imagine being in a situation where lives are on the line, and your organization is just now starting to determine what to say about the situation, how to get the message out, and who to get it out to. Delays in responses can lead to anger from the community due to the lack of timeliness, while quick responses build or rebuild trust both internally and externally. It demonstrates that your organization are the experts to handle this crisis, and that you have your act together.
Clear Coordination: A crisis plan outlines the role of each person who will actively or passively be affected by the crisis. This ensures everyone knows what to do, how to do it and when, as well as how to engage those who are affected by the crisis. This could be the media, employees, shareholders, supporting organizations such as non-profits who support your community and more. Having this kind of plan in place helps your organization respond effectively, and prevents mistakes or inconsistencies in the narrative.
Legal and Regulatory Protection: Having a crisis communications plan developed with the help of your legal team involved gives you a chance to get out ahead of any legal or regulatory requirements by identifying and addressing them ahead of a crisis. This ensures that you are likely covered and compliant in your response. The last thing you want on top of a crisis is legal liability!
Key Components of a Crisis Communications Plan
Crisis Team: Identify who is responsible for managing the overall crisis and the communication during a crisis. Be sure to include the:
Overall person in charge. This person may or may not be the head of your organization.
Leadership team who reports to that person in charge and the various roles in that team. This could vary depending on the crisis.
Communications lead
Communications team, including:
Social media
Media
Writers
Information gatherers
Community or shareholder engagement liaisons
Spokespersons. Identify several. Sometimes it’s the organization’s leader, however, that may not always be appropriate. At times, it may be more suited for a communications expert.
Likely Crises: Take some time to think about the most likely crises your organization could face, and how you want to respond.
One great way to do this is by getting together with the people responsible for managing the crisis and brainstorming every crisis your organization could face. This serves two purposes: it helps develop pre-drafted messages and templates, and it gains concurrence on the process from those who are managing the crisis. When they buy into the crisis communications planning, they are more likely to support it when it comes to implementation.
Communication Channels: Outline the channels to be used for internal and external communication during the crisis. If you’re not sure which channels to use, ask your team and your audience! In one of the organizations I led crisis communications for, we sent out a survey asking our audience how they preferred to hear from us. Learning that they liked coming to our website and one specific social media platform gave us a crucial headstart when responding to crises.
Pre-Drafted Templates: No one crafts their best responses under stress. Create pre-drafted templates and messaging to help you make a quick, well-designed response. This section of your plan can be as simple or detailed as needed. Some plans I’ve written only had a few pages of pre-written templates, others had over 50 pages.
It is also helpful to have time stamps of when these templates will be used. For example: “Within one hour of crisis, distribute the following holding statement to [name] audiences.”
Identify Your Audiences: There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to crisis communications. You need a plan that identifies and prioritizes your audiences and their needs. Think about the different messages that need to be heard by your employees, customers, community members, board of directors or governing bodies, media, investors, etc.
Training and Testing: A crisis plan is useless if no one knows it exists – it happened to me – or knows how to use it. Update the plan at least yearly, and regularly train staff and those involved in the response on how to use it to ensure you’re ready when the worst happens.
Do you have a crisis communications plan?
If so, this is the perfect time to review or update it. If not, we’re here to help! With decades of experience in responding to a variety of crises, we’d love to help you develop or implement your crisis communication plan.