How to Plan for a Crisis Before It Happens

By: Paige Liston, Account Manager

We all know that, unfortunately, a crisis situation can strike at any time. And for some reason, they seem to happen when you least expect it, or during a time when you’re already juggling multiple tasks. No one can prevent a crisis from happening, but you can plan for it. 

Having a strong plan in place before something happens will limit your stress, and ideally, allow your team to effectively manage the situation. Below are four steps that your organization can use when preparing for a crisis in order to communicate transparently to your stakeholder groups.  

Step 1: Identify What a Crisis Is In Your Organization

First and foremost, determine whether or not the situation you’re facing actually constitutes as a crisis. A crisis is anything that has the potential to seriously disrupt normal business or harm an organization’s reputation. If what you are facing would not seriously disrupt business as usual, or cause harm to your company’s good standing, then you may just be facing a situation. 

Step 2: Identify a Core Team

The Core Team will vary depending on the organization, but it will likely consist of upper management, like the CEO, CFO, manager and/or president of an organization, as well as the people who directly handle marketing and communications. Additionally, depending on the type of crisis, you may need to add additional contacts to your Core Team that are outside your immediate organization, like a vendor or agency partner. Keep a running list of your Core Team members, as well as their contact information, so you can easily contact one another throughout the crisis management process. 

Step 3: Define potential audiences 

Identify all audiences potentially affected by the crises you listed, like victims or families (if there are any), employees, employees’ families, customers, news media, the public at large, brand ambassadors, board members, etc. Be aware that if there are victims in a crisis, this audience always get first priority, no exceptions. Then, assign a contact from your identified Core Team to each audience. 

Step 4: Craft potential key messages and statements

Create three potential key message points. Those key points should address: 

1. What we know and our position on the situation

2. How we feel about the situation

3. What we’re doing about it

These key points would be used consistently throughout your communication and to address various stakeholder groups. 

Planning for and managing a crisis can certainly be stressful. Having the right partner to help you create a plan can save you time and energy. Contact us at info@bohlsengroup.com for help with creating your internal crisis communications plan.