Crisis communications is something the UK does very well and many PR professionals see it as an important part of their offer to clients. It's also an area of PR where processes and best practice evolve at a breakneck pace. I've separately worked on crisis response for critical national infrastructure, as part of the emergency services' command structure and within the consumer finance space and I've seen a lot of transferable lessons. I've found that training and certification in crisis communications is always helpful though sometimes it can focus on business continuity planning processes, rather than the nuts and bolts of effective communications work.
Though PRCA's training is an honorable exception, I think it might be helpful to share some practical ideas that might honed your response to an emergency. This obviously isn't a comprehensive list, but I hope you might find at least one or points of use.
1. Remember: Everyone is human
Comms during an crisis situation can be exhausting and one error even senior practitioners sometimes make is not transferring the handling of an incident over to colleagues in a timely fashion. You might be uniquely well briefed on the issue and know what dozens of different people are doing about it but if you've been working for fourteen hours and are a packet of crisps away from hypoglycemia, you're probably not making the optimum decisions. This is particularly true when briefing the press. Prepare a handover and trust your colleagues to get it right.
2. Contingency plans work as well as they have been tested
Good crisis comms goes hand-in-hand with wider business continuity processes. The nested tables and check lists of a corporate contingency plan can reassuring appear to be smoothly interlocking cogs. Unless those plans are tested, ideally in a war game that brings everyone in at once, gaps between the cogs can quickly appear. One commons problem is that log ins, passwords and press lines are not shared through all appropriate levels of a team, or your consumer contact staff have to wait too long for information.
Another issue is the tendency for a laundry list of folk to form when it comes to approving press lines. The approval process need to crystal clear and as short as possible, to ensure your messages can be agreed in minutes rather than hours. If possible periodically take your business continuity plan apart and challenge the bits that aren't tight enough (and if you don't have a plan, think about writing one with colleagues, but that's obviously a different article).
3. Social media has turned every crisis into a conversation
The ubiquity of Twitter and Facebook has meant the practicalities of releasing a holding press line and then getting some rough and ready feedback on how stakeholders are responding has never been easier. It obviously also raises the stakes, as an ill judged or inaccurate release can make a bad situation a viral disaster. Little things like word choice are important. Even something as simple as acknowledging a situation then specifying “we are investigating the issue” invites follow up questions on the status of the 'investigation.' Keep things simple and be certain of every word.
I'd also flag to the need to remember that in an emergency or an ongoing crisis situation, social media channels can also be a vital source of situational updates. Make sure you and who ever is social media monitor (including interns or temporary staff), know how to escalate information effectively.
4.When you say something is almost as important as what you say
If you're engaging with the press or general public during a crisis then getting accurate and reassuring messages out as fast as possible is rarely the wrong step. However, with ICT issues in particular, a poorly timed message can have the same effect as a denial of service attack, as legions of user crash your site looking for further information. Equally, revealing a problem without describing the scale and the solutions being deployed to solve it can let rumours run riot. One guideline would be 'am I withholding information that would allow people to reduce the risks they are exposed to?' Unnecessarily sitting on the news of a leak, breach and product flaw makes it's inevitable discovery all the worse, losing you good will and trust on top of the hit from the news itself.
5. Ignore internal comms at your peril
If the crisis is of a scale that workers may be reading about it from external sources, your messaging around it must be carefully calibrated. Too often organisations suffer a serious hit to morale if workers feel like executives are pushing blame unfairly towards them. An effectively handled crisis can actually build solidarity across an entire organisation. At the risk of spouting a cliché, anything that can inspire people to feel like they're taking an active part in dealing with the crisis is valuable and worthwhile. Where possible get your messages simultaneously pushed on internal and external channels, but provide additional operational context for internal audiences. And don't forgot to get a senior executive to thank everyone involved in dealing with the crisis when it's over – even those who weren't involved will hear the message that things were dealt with effectively.
Communicating during a crisis is one of the moments when good communications can come into its own, spreading reassure and vital information to stop a bad situation getting worse. I hope at least some of these steers are helpful the next time you tackle a high pressure situation.