Posts tagged ‘Stakeholder Engagement’
The Basics of Crisis Communications – Part Four, Top Ten List
Managing an issue or crisis effectively is key to managing your brand’s reputation. Many companies are ill-prepared for crises and manage them poorly when they arise, but by sticking to a few simple best practices, you can ensure you’re prepared to weather any storm and keep your brand’s reputation intact.
Source: foodliabilitylaw.com
Crisis Management Top 10 List
10. Have a crisis plan in place. The exercise of writing the plan is at least as important as the plan itself since it forces people to think about likely scenarios that could turn into crises.
9. Identify potential crisis scenarios and transform them into ‘issues’ that are managed over time.
8. Make long-term deposits into a “good will bank” so that, in the event of a crisis, you can make withdrawals and ideally never have a negative balance of good will.
7. During a bona fide crisis, stay in front of the story. Live by this mantra: “Tell it first and tell it fast.”
6. Remember that the Internet shortens timeframes and provides global reach. Use the Internet to your advantage to manage issues and crises.
5. Never forget that in a crisis, your employees are the most important audience.
- Establish excellent relations in advance of any crisis
- Inform them about the crisis—instill confidence in management
- Equip them with key messages to take to the community
- Ask for their support in a call to action
- Hold personal, regular, interactive meetings
4. Use third party experts to tell your story during a crisis.
3. Use the principles of Risk Communication.
2. Use media/presentation training during a crisis and rehearse before speaking with the media or any groups. Avoid hiding from the media.
And most importantly…
1. When communicating with your stakeholders:
- Show empathy (Be human)
- Tell the truth (Be factual – minimize speculation)
- Tell it fast (Be timely)
- David Kalson, CEO, specializes in energy, environment and crisis/issues management.
The Basics of Crisis Communications – Part Two
As noted in Part One of this series, developing a crisis response plan and testing it regularly is crucial for nearly all businesses and organizations. In fact, the process of developing the plan is as valuable as the plan itself. The reason is that the process forces managers to identify company vulnerabilities that could lead to crises, and very often these vulnerabilities can be mitigated or eliminated as the plan is being developed. There are a number of factors to consider when developing the plan, such as:
1. Including the proper steps:
- 1: Empower employees to detect crises and potential crises and notify their managers
- 2: Train managers to determine the nature of the incident with a process to report, if warranted, the incident to Crisis Team Liaison
- 3: Assemble Crisis Response and Communications Team
- 4: Crisis Response and Comms. Team categorizes the seriousness of the incident so response is commensurate the degree of seriousness
- 5: Crisis Response and Comms. Team takes appropriate operational and communications actions, tracks progress and makes continual adjustments
2. Identifying your audiences:
- Customers – existing and potential
- Partners
- Policy/Elected Officials/Regulators
- Affiliate Organizations
- Media – traditional and new
- Environmental Community
- Vendors/Suppliers
- Investors
- Employees
3. Understanding and using the principles of Risk Communication – identifying factors for each scenario that may increase outrage among your audiences, such as**:
- Perceived effects are not observable
- Extent of effects is unknown to victims
- Delayed effect
- New or less studied risk
- Risk controlled by others
- Risk unfairly distributed (not equitable)
- Risk impossible for an individual to mitigate
- Risk capable of creating multiple victims in single place
4. Incorporating tactics to reduce outrage:
- Listen – people are calmer when they’re listened to
- Cede some control, perhaps through community advisory panels or a hotline
- Use the right words and comparisons to communicate risk
- Find common ground and focus on the valid complaints
- Educate through trusted third parties
- Be human – empathize
Crisis preparedness also includes making regular deposits into the “good will bank.” If you regularly and visibly contribute to the communities where you operate and invest in your stakeholders – employees, customers, communities, media and government officials – they may be much more understanding if and when a crisis occurs.
Up next – how the Internet and social media are creating a whole new avenue for generating (and managing) crises.
** See Peter Sandman’s work on outrage factors: http://www.psandman.com/index-OM.htm
- David Kalson, CEO, specializes in energy, environment and crisis/issues management.
The Basics of Crisis Communications – A Four Part Series
Business crises are all over the news, and commentary is abundant on how they’re being handled – even years later. Take the coverage of the recent News Corp. crisis or the Air France crash in 2009, for example. Unfortunately m
any businesses are not adequately prepared when a crisis hits and are criticized for the way they manage it. By preparing for potential crises well in advance, however, you can ensure that your business stays on track if one occurs.
Implementing a crisis response plan – and testing it regularly through simulation exercises – is key to being prepared. Effective crisis plans:
- Are simple – a basic checklist is helpful.
- Include a crisis team and spokesperson(s) from both operational and communications sides with up-to-date contact info and backups for each.
- Identify plausible crisis scenarios and plan for them, with defined objectives, pre-written documents and messaging for each.
- Have pre-approved “boilerplate” documents.
- Have third-party supporters that can be relied on to help carry messages.
- Are tested often (once or twice a year).
Up next, all the components to consider when developing the crisis plan.
- David Kalson, CEO, specializes in energy, environment and crisis/issues management.
Ricochet Public Relations Launches D.C. Public Affairs Practice
This week has been an especially exciting one for all of us at Ricochet. On Monday we named Valerie Carter
as Vice President of our Washington, D.C., public affairs practice. Valerie is a 20-year veteran of the public affairs and government relations fields. In the nation’s capital, she will provide a variety of public affairs services to our clients, which include but are not limited to: grassroots and grasstops organizing, coalition building, third party advocacy and congressional outreach.
Valerie began her career at the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., where she held positions in both public affairs and government relations for 15 years. She managed Merck’s grassroots programs, the Merck PAC as well as Merck’s congressional education and outreach initiatives. In 2005, Valerie managed the government affairs office for the Project Management Institute (PMI), the world’s leading not-for-profit membership association for the project management profession, with more than half a million members. At the PMI Valerie was responsible for strategy and implementation of government advocacy and outreach initiatives with Congress and federal agencies.
Not only because of her extensive experience in Washington, D.C., is Valerie uniquely qualified to lead our public affairs practice. She also has unparalleled expertise across two of our core business units – healthcare and industry — and her insight and experience in D.C. will be a real asset to our clients by helping them to establish a strong presence in the Beltway and thought leadership on vital public issues.
All of us here at Ricochet are thrilled to have Valerie on our team. Her experience and skills will be an important and significant addition to our existing portfolio of expertise. We are certain her leadership will give us the opportunity to grow as a public affairs agency in the Beltway and beyond.
If you would like to learn more about Valerie Carter and the services we offer in D.C. as well as in our New York office, please visit our Web site. Should you have questions for Valerie or about our new practice in the Beltway, feel free to post them as comments to this article or send an email to the webmaster at info@ricochetpr.com.
Written by Patrick Bartosch
