Every business is vulnerable in some way, to something.
How would your business respond if a negative news story appeared in the media?
What would you do if faced with a public relations crisis?
A crisis can take any number of forms. For example, it might stem from a product recall, environmental catastrophe, white collar crime, or a large-scale data breach.
How your business responds will impact how well you withstand the crisis.
Your words and actions will:
- Influence the duration of the crisis
- Contribute to the severity of the damage to your brand and reputation and
- If trust has been eroded, they will affect how quickly it can be restored.
Presented here are ten essential rules for crisis management.
10 Essential Crisis Management Rules
1. Be prepared. Make sure you have an up-to-date and well understood crisis management plan in place.
2. When confronted with a crisis, appoint one credible media spokesperson.
3. Silence is not golden – it usually makes things worse.
4. Be quick to respond but avoid a knee-jerk reaction.
5. Be clear, factual and honest.
6. Take responsibility, respond appropriately, disassociate your brand from any guilty parties, and take steps to ensure a repeat event will not occur.
7. Be consistent with your messaging – don’t say one thing to your employees, another thing to your clients, and something different to the media.
8. Resource the management of a crisis appropriately. If you don’t have expertise in-house, or your communications team needs extra support, engage a PR firm or an expert in crisis communications.
9. Stay calm. People could be under pressure, stressed, distressed, or personally affected.
10. Learn from the crisis and from your mistakes. Debrief after every crisis and take the necessary steps to address any weaknesses or gaps in your processes or plan.
