Crisis Communications: Too Important Not to Plan For

[by Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications]

As we try to hold on to the last days of summer, many organizations are well into planning for the year ahead.  If your organization’s fiscal year begins on January 1, chances are you’re already hard at work on your budget for 2017.

A former boss of mine used to categorize budget items into “must have,” “nice to have” and “would like to have, but can’t afford.”  For many organizations, crisis planning unfortunately falls into the latter category, despite the fact that a badly managed crisis can be one of the most expensive events to negatively affect the bottom line.  Just consider the cost of one lost customer or one disaffected major donor, one key executive departure, loss of shelf space, negative media coverage, or an adverse zoning decision – all the potential outcomes of a crisis event that might hit even the best-managed organization.  There’s no guarantee that having an effective crisis communications plan in place will completely mitigate the impact of events like these, but a good plan significantly increases the likelihood that customers, donors, employees, retail partners, the media and others will hear your side of the story as these events unfold.

What does a crisis communications plan buy you?  Here are just a few examples of the ROI:

• Faster response to unfolding events – A big part of an effective plan is the preparedness component. That means when a crisis happens, you can spend more time managing your response and less time figuring out what to do.  It means you’ll already have your team identified, have their roles figured out and the tools they’ll need will have already been developed.
• Improved ability to respond to media interest and enhanced ability to engage on social media – There’s no question that both traditional media and new media play critical roles in how crises are perceived by the outside world.  A good crisis communications plan gives you the guidance to deal with these information gatekeepers professionally and avoid common missteps that tend to occur when you are in the midst of a highly stressful situation.
• Fewer dropped balls and missed opportunities – A good crisis communications plan will give you prompts and tools to make sure you aren’t overlooking an important step in any of your outreach activities and will remind you to take some actions you might not have thought of by yourself.  Good plans are written by individuals who work in crisis communications every day.  They bring that perspective to the product they develop for you.
• Consistent messaging across all audiences – Perhaps the largest challenge organizations in crisis face is making sure all of their stakeholders hear the same story and that none of the information they need to hear gets lost in the effort to communicate as quickly as possible.  A good plan anticipates the most likely events an organization might face and creates messages for them – in advance.  And, if an unanticipated event occurs, the plan provides a way to develop key messages along with solid responses to likely questions, thereby significantly increasing the chance that your side of the story gets told in the way you want to tell it and in the all-important first news cycle.

When budgets are tight (and when are they not?), the easy decision might be to place crisis communications planning in the “would like to have, but can’t afford” category.  That is, until one considers the impact bad crisis communications can have on an organization’s largest uninsured asset – its reputation.  Suddenly, “must have” makes a lot more sense.

Photo Credit:  Pixabay