Great Crisis Management Strategies
As much as companies hope that nothing bad will happen to them, the inevitability of negative situations is a fact.
Whether it’s a product defect that results in a recall, workplace disaster, or a security breach, bad things will end up happening to companies.
It might not be a happy thing to think about, but it’s realistic and important to plan for since no one has the luxury of getting out of negative situations.
Crisis management is how companies are able to prevent, prepare for, and respond to different negative situations for them and their employees.
It also helps companies identify uncertain conditions that could end up causing harm. Crisis management can then help them mitigate the impact of these situations.
Crisis management helps companies be proactive, identify potential threats, and create a process to work through those threats before a crisis can happen.
Pre-Crisis
The first part of the crisis management process is preventing potential crisis situations. This includes creating a crisis management plan, hiring and training a crisis management team, and conducting exercises to help implement a plan.
Another important element of crisis management is drafting communication messages that a business might have to relay during a crisis situation.
Creating those types of messages beforehand saves a lot of time when a crisis situation actually happens.
Response and Management
The next part of crisis management is dealing with the different crisis stages and responding to them. During this stage, companies actually put their crisis management plans into action.
That means they’re releasing the crisis communication messages that were previously drafted. It also means frequently communicating with employees and stakeholders, and informing the public regarding the situation.
Post-Crisis
Once a crisis situation has passed, the crisis management work isn’t over yet. It’s important for companies to continue communicating with their consumers, employees, and stakeholders, and to remain available to respond to any questions. Another general rule of thumb is to send out proactive updates to the aforementioned parties.
It’s also important to work with the crisis management team to review and analyze the crisis management plan.
During that process, companies can learn about how a given crisis situation played out and how the crisis communications plan performed during it.
Any lessons that a company has learned from their crisis management process can then be integrated into future crisis management plans.
To be fully equipped to and execute great crisis management, companies should also be prepared to handle different types of crises that can happen to a business.
Between financial, personnel, organizational, technological, and natural crisis situations, there are plenty of plans that businesses can make to stay prepared.
Lastly, it’s also smart to quantify the impact that each type of crisis can have on a company, as that’s the best way to understand every possible angle of a situation, and to appropriately prepare for everything.
These processes can help businesses determine the right actions and activities they should take to resolve any sort of crisis situation.
Ronn Torossian is the CEO and founder of NY based PR firm 5W Public Relations. Torossian is also the founder of the Ronn Torossian Foundation, and a lifelong New Yorker.
