Understanding a Crisis

A crisis is an immediate threat to the reputation of your business, and this can include a multitude of sub-issues from the health and safety of staff or customers, to shareholder value and loss of trust.

Crisis management, while often thought of as a reactive measure, should also be considered an ongoing preventative task to anticipate and prepare for potential crises that may affect your business and its operations and people.

Crises are often unpredictable events relating to a natural disaster, major economic impact facing the whole industry or country, or an issue that has escalated into a crisis which may have a sever impact on the business.

An issue could be an everyday operational activity of your business that has gone wrong, and which with a strategic issue management plan in place can be resolved quickly.

The Covid-19 global pandemic is a current example of a crisis – this has impact people and businesses across various industries in numerous ways, some severely and others have had the opportunity to pivot their business into other areas successfully. Travel, tourism and hospitality are amongst the most severely impacted by this crisis due to border closures and varying Alert Levels requiring social distancing which is not a setting that these trades thrive in. Staffing, operations, physical buildings and services have all been impact with a reduction in customers. Communication has been a vital part of the process in the handling of this crisis – communication streams have traversed staff and customer comms, to social media and website updates, to lobbying Government and other industry stakeholders for support in what has been unchartered territory.

We have a number of case studies of real issues and crises (anonymized for client confidentiality) relating to a variety of industries – please contact us and we can share case studies with you that are relevant to your industry.

Please also see our ‘Types of Issue and Crises’ page for a comprehensive list of the types of issues that a business, person or industry might face.

Having media training, knowing your key messages and being able to respond to difficult questions effectively are skills that should be in every executive’s tool kit. Media training will help you prepare for both difficult and positive media opportunities where you are representing your brand, customers, shareholders and yourself.

When you are watching, reading or listening to the news, think about how company spokespeople fit into an editorial story regarding an issue – do they come across defensive, do you believe what they are saying and feel that they are doing a good job? Think about it from a customer’s perspective – ultimately, when you are handling a media enquiry, the media are another platform for you to communicate to your customers and shareholders – you want them to feel reassured that you have any issues under control and that you are doing the right things.

Media training can also help you prepare for curly questions – your PR partner should be aware of all issues your company is facing that could impact the brand and shareholder value. Based on knowledge of media interest in the nature of the issue, your PR partner can prepare a number of curly questions and help you prepare answers that will satisfy the reporter while also protecting you and your brand from areas that you may be unable to discuss.

Communication is key to diffusing issues. Depending on the nature of the issue and who or what it affects, there may be a number of stakeholders including industry associations/regulators, shareholders, staff and customers that you need to inform of the issue, particularly if it will interrupt business as usual.

While you are not obliged to divulge every detail relating to the issue, it is best practice and better for you and the handling of the issue if you are seen to be open, honest and transparent – this will help to alleviate distractions and allow you to focus on handling the issue so you can return to business as usual as soon as possible. A focus on retaining customers and keeping shareholders informed and satisfied that the issue is being handled appropriately should be a priority focus.

You are also not obliged to take every media interview request that comes your way – this is where a well-prepared reactive media statement can help you by providing an approved response to media, which will present your current handling of the situation with a consistent and clear message.

Nothing beats preparation, and the more ready a company is for a crisis, the better handled it will be. Protecting a brand starts with knowing who the voice/s of the brand is when something goes wrong, and this appointed person or people must be trained at a media-quality level to respond to tricky questions about a variety of scenarios. When a crisis hits, the company needs a voice and a face to humanise the brand, and whomever is speaking for the business must be well prepared and properly supported with the facts and appropriate information. The first rule is to be honest. The second is to put people first.

In support of the spokesperson/s, they and other primary leaders in the company must put in the time to imagine every crisis that could reasonably affect the business and agree how it would be handled when media attention is directed at the brand. Work out the process to handle each possibility, and what the key messages would be to the public and other stakeholders.

Sort your back-up plan as well. If the appointed crisis spokesperson is unavailable, out of mobile connection or otherwise way out of range for the critical first 24 hours, who is in charge? The crisis plan should always include a plan B (and even plan C) designate, and they must be media-trained, fully messaged and properly supported as well.

Establish a system of constant environment scanning for the business – this may be monitoring media for keywords, checking in regularly with certain stakeholders, or monitoring weather and financial reports for signs of volatility that could affect your business. Decide who on your team is responsible for this, who is the back-up in the event the key person/s is not there, who do they report to and the process by which monitoring and reporting happens. Educate the whole company about environment scanning so they know to raise a flag if they spot something of interest.

The key to effective scanning is training everyone to be aware of issues that are relevant to the company, then ensuring they feel confident about speaking up – and that the chain of command works well so the C-suite/board are brought in when needed.

When a crisis hits, there are several actions which may be tempting in the moment but which are best avoided:

• Don’t be drawn into someone else’s timetable or media deadline if you feel ill prepared. If you need time, state so clearly and take it. Tell the journalist when you will be able to provide a response, and meet that agreed deadline. There is usually room to negotiate when reporters are waiting for facts and direct quotes from the subject of the story.

• Don’t get hung up on talking with media if it’s action on the ground in your organisation that’s needed first. Have a trusted lieutenant deal with the media enquiry for you, thank them and explain that you are dealing with your first priorities in the business and will be in touch as soon as possible.

• Don’t lie, obfuscate or attempt to cover up or shift blame. The buck stops at the top, and scapegoating is never a good tactic. It also makes it more likely that people in the organisation will turn on the leadership and tell their side of the story to media, which is likely to be disadvantageous all round.

Part of going through a crisis and coming out the other side is understanding that it will take time, and there are important landmarks of ‘recovery’ along the way.

The short game is what you do to manage the crisis in the early days: deal with media enquiries and make sure the facts are in the public domain; take care of your stakeholders, including staff and customers, partners to the business and any investors; ensure your online presence is up to spec and the story is being told appropriately on your website and social channels (including managing comments from the public); and communicate what you have done or are doing to rectify the issue that has emerged.

The long game is what you do to rehabilitate the business’s or individual’s reputation, to the degree that is required. This may involve working to secure ‘good’ PR that will come up on the first page of a Google search, and investing in your community. There is a consumer expectation that good companies give back to the communities in which they operate. This doesn’t need to amount to huge annual expenditure, but businesses and their leaders do need to show goodwill, good faith and a sense of responsibility as commercial operators. It goes beyond the simple provision of goods and services.

Early investment in good deeds can pay dividends, because handling a crisis and coming out of it well depends in part on how close you have remained to the communities in which your company operates. Have you been in touch over the years when times were good? Do the people in the community know the company’s leaders? When the chips are down and questions are being asked about your company’s role in an ‘event’, relationships count for a lot.

In the digital era, the internet affects crises in a couple of important ways. First, it can be the source of the crisis, such as a social media post or tweet or photo or rumour that takes hold in cyberspace and threatens the reputation of a business or individual. Second, the web vastly increases the speed at which a story takes hold, and narrows the window for a media-ready response.

Because of the online factor, the test of crisis readiness is your ‘go-live time’ – whether you can communicate clearly and directly with all stakeholder groups within 30 minutes of the crisis being identified, and whether the messaging is consistent across all those groups – which may be staff, customers/clients, directors, media and the general public, and possibly across a wide geographic area.

You will need to deploy mobile and email databases, instant messaging, social media channels, Zoom/Skype or conference call facilities, and more. Check that all that data is current, and that you have well-functioning systems for feeding in fresh data and deleting anything no longer current.