When a crisis erupts at your organization, you won’t have time to develop a response from scratch, so instead, you’ll need to have a robust crisis communications plan already in place.

With this plan ready to go you can effectively communicate with your employees, stakeholders, customers, and the general public.

Whether you’re dealing with protests, strike activity, severe injuries or fatalities, acts of violence, data breaches, allegations of harassment or discrimination, large-scale lawsuits, or any other crisis, this Insight will give you a head start on a playbook you can put into effect to mitigate organizational damage.

Prologue: Agree on Operating Principles

Before you can go to your playbook, it’s critical for an organization to agree upon a set of operating principles that will govern the process.

• Maintain discipline: Your organization will need to closely follow the agreed-upon crisis management processes or it won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. If you have leaders who are prone to shooting from the hip and acting impulsively, you will need to get their buy-in on this process – and an agreement from them to abide by the plan.

• Commit to truth: In a similar vein, your organization needs to make a commitment to deal in facts, not assumptions, speculation, or untruths. If you have concerns that leaders or others cannot commit to this principle, you should address that situation before launching any plan.

• Be flexible: While your finalized plan may seem perfect in theory, realize that things can change quickly in a crisis. Your team needs to be ready, willing, and able to adapt when they do.

Step 1: Develop Your Core Crisis Team

Your first step is identifying a primary crisis response team – as well as designated back-ups who will be available to assist in the event that key members are unavailable when crisis strikes. You’ll want to include members of your Technology, Operations, HR, Communications, Finance, and Legal teams at a minimum.

Step 2: Settle on a Company-Specific Escalation Scale and Framework

You’ll want to review a standard escalation framework to help you quickly identify and classify the type of situation you’re dealing with. But you’ll also want to adapt it depending on your organization’s specific circumstances and perhaps even begin thinking about which types of incidents would fall into which category given your organization’s unique history and current standing.

Step 3: Create a Crisis Comms Escalation Worksheet

Your worksheet will help you identify which category a specific situation fits into, and could also help guide you should the winds shift and the problem evolves from one category to the other. You should take into account the unique and specific circumstances related to your organization when developing the spreadsheet such as but not linted to, the financial and reputational impact on your organization.

Step 4: Create Logistical Preparations

Your team should review all of the logistical steps that will be deployed when a crisis develops. This includes items such as having up-to-date email distribution lists, proper facility security protocols, and a healthy crisis management budget.

Step 5: Schedule Proactive Preparation Meetings

You’ve done the hard work in establishing a preemptive plan for handling any crisis – now make sure you hone that work with regular meetings.

Step 6: Launch Crisis Response

The inevitable has happened and you have a crisis on your hands. What should you do? It depends on what level we’re dealing with. Is it a minor issue, a serious problem or a severe circumstance?

Step 7: Develop Contingency Plans

No two crises are the same. That’s why flexibility is crucial – and you need to be ready with contingency planning. Consider and prepare for a wide variety of possible outcomes and scenarios. Start game-planning with your team for what you will do if the issue is resolved quickly and favorably. Or if it escalates in severity or scale.

What if an important audience receives inaccurate information? Or information leaks to the media or gains unexpected attention? Or secondary issues come to light and derail your pre-developed plans? Being ready to adjust on the fly starts with thinking proactively ahead of time and having some idea of how you’ll flex as needed.

Step 8: Stick to Your Messaging Principles

Regardless of how you respond to the crisis as it develops and morphs, make sure you stick to your main messaging principles – which can be summarized by the FACE acronym.

• Facts: Limit your communications to facts and demand that all who participate in releasing information place accuracy above everything else. Quickly correct any misinformation and make sure no one from the organization ever speculates.

• Accountability: Even if the situation is not the fault of your organization, demonstrate through both words and actions that you will do what you can to assist. You should also publicly commit to steps you’ll take to prevent it from recurring.

• Consistency: Commit to uniform messaging throughout a crisis. This will demonstrate to your stakeholders that you are in control of the situation and acting with purpose.

• Empathy: Finally, it’s important to show you have considered the effect of a crisis on other affected parties. Demonstrating empathy in a public setting will help demonstrate that your organization understands the big picture.

Step 9: Conduct a Post-Crisis Pulse Check

Once the crisis has died down, it’s time to take a deep breath – but not time to stop your work. You should engage your team to conduct a post-crisis pulse check.

Step 10: Review and Learn

And finally, make sure that you don’t lose the opportunity to grow from this process. Survey all crisis team participants and gather feedback about their experiences – what went well, and what they would do differently next time.

Then conduct a full-team meeting to discuss all of the findings and prepare a final report on the lessons learned, with recommendations for improvement. You should aim to complete the full post-crisis review process no more than four weeks after the crisis has resolved.

Conclusion

A crisis can occur at any time. If your organization does not have a plan, you can lose control of the narrative quickly. Having a playbook doesn’t guarantee a successful response but it will go a long way to reducing the risk that there will be lasting damage to your organization. Be proactive.

If you have any questions or would like further information, please consult your Fisher Phillips attorney, the authors of this Insight, or a member of Fisher Phillips’ Crisis Communications and Strategy Team. Make sure you are subscribed to Fisher Phillips’ Insight System to gather the most up-to-date information about crisis communications issues.

Rick Grimaldi is the author of FLEX: A Leader’s Guide to Staying Nimble and Mastering Transformative Change in the Workplace. Based on his thirty years of working with employers large and small, Rick’s influential work provides a blueprint for all employers to understand and navigate the incredible changes occurring in the workplace that impact everything from hiring to terminations, and all the issues that occur in between. By combining his labor relations skills, negotiating acumen, and employment counseling experience on behalf of his clients, Rick actively builds strong partnerships as both a legal counselor and trusted business advisor. Rick partners with his clients to help achieve their workplace goals by combining sound practical strategic advice with an understanding that business decisions are never made in a vacuum.

Rick has spent his career defending the interests of businesses around the world, achieving positive results for his clients in major discrimination litigation, union campaigns, collective bargaining and arbitrations, and at the same time working to help them be better employers, leading to more satisfied employees and ultimately increased employer success in the marketplace.

Jeannie Muzinic is a member of Fisher Phillips' Executive Leadership Team and leads the Marketing, Business Development, Media, Marketing Technology, and Client Experience functions. Leveraging the firm’s ability to quickly respond to rapidly evolving workplace issues, Jeannie’s role ensures clients have robust access to leading thought leadership resources, innovation offerings, and client experience opportunities through the firm’s website, event programming, digital campaigns and tailored client portals. Implementing a diversified marketing technology infrastructure allows the firm to disseminate curated content, emphasize its brand equity and substantive strengths, and provide a gateway for client feedback to ensure the firm consistently and proactively provides exceptional client service and addresses the needs of the modern employer. Jeannie also works closely with the firm’s Management Committee and firm leadership to implement strategic priorities across its practice groups, industry teams, and markets. The seamless integration across the Executive Leadership Team truly sets Fisher Phillips apart as it enables collaboration, innovation, and diversity of ideas.

Melanie Webber is a partner in the firm’s Cleveland office and serves as chair of the firm’s Women’s Initiative and Leadership Council. She represents and advises clients in all aspects of HR, employment and labor relations matters, including FMLA, ADA, FLSA and NLRA compliance, leaves of absence, terminations, severance agreements, reductions-in-force, wage-hour and employment practices audits, and supervisor and manager training.

Over her career, she has represented and advised many employers on traditional labor issues and has significant experience guiding clients during union organizing campaigns, including helping her clients with union awareness by identifying workplace issues and creating strategies to effectively address them.

Melanie also has defended non-union and unionized employers in unfair labor practice and representation election proceedings before numerous NLRB regions across the country. She also has experience in handling grievance arbitrations and negotiating collective bargaining agreements.

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