During a Communications Crisis

At the first sign of a developing crisis, the crisis communication plan needs to be put into action. The first step should be to ensure the safety and security of all employees and constituents. The internal communications manager should activate the emergency notification system to send information to employees and constituents about the crisis, what's being done to resolve it and what they should do in the interim.

© Photographer: Oriontrail | Agency: Dreamstime.com When a crisis erupts, put your plan into action.

Depending on the nature of the crisis, the proper emergency authorities may need to be notified as well -- police, fire and local emergency management officials.

Internal crisis communication is crucial for safety and for information management. If employees get their information from watching and reading news reports -- especially negative news reports -- their morale could suffer. Employees must be made to feel like "insiders," or they will act like "outsiders." If employees don't feel like trusted members of the team, they could become sources of unwanted leaks to the press [source: U.S. Department of State].

To even keep well meaning employees from offering too much or inaccurate information to the press, it's recommended that the crisis communication team issue internal statements that employees could read if contacted by the press. The statement could refer reporters to an upcoming press conference or suggest they contact the official spokesperson instead.

When to Go Public?

The mantra of crisis communications is "Tell it all and tell it fast" [source: Communications for Management]. It's better for negative information to come directly from the organization in the form of an honest apology than from its critics in the form of a damaging indictment.

However, a fine line exists between responding quickly and acting hastily [source: Continuity Central]. Going public about a crisis is irresponsible if you don't have sufficient information, and more importantly, satisfying answers about what you're doing to resolve the situation.

A smart first move is to send out a press release covering the basic who, what, when and where of the crisis. The organization should also display concern for any victims involved or damages incurred. The idea is to always be the one supplying the most information the fastest.

Crisis Case Study: Virginia Tech As the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting unfolded, millions of students, parents and concerned citizens went straight to the VT website for more information. VT webmaster Michael Dame and his team have been widely praised for handling the daunting crisis communication task with timely updates and tasteful design decisions [source: collegewebeditor.com] There are lessons that can be learned from Virginia Tech's online crisis communication experience: Because of the traffic surge to an organization's homepage during a crisis, it's important to remove immediately all Flash components, images or other heavy files. These files will eat up bandwidth and overload the site's servers. Stick with text announcements. VT tried to post an audio podcast from the university president, but it overloaded the servers. Establish a relationship with another Web site where you can post crisis information in the event of a server crash. VT also posted messages on the Virginia State Police Web site.