Crisis Communications

The need for a crisis communications strategy and plan has never been as crucial as it is today. The catastrophic events of recent years have shown that relying solely on traditional communications tools for contacting employees, customers and other constituents in a time of need is not enough for relaying vital information. Every organization can find itself in a crisis. This week’s articles can help you handle the communications aspects of a disruption.

Many people view crisis communication as strategy for protecting corporate reputation carried out by public relations and legal – not as a strategy for rapid decision-making amongst executives and decision-makers and the rapid mobilization of response teams. (Item #1) Whatever the reason for invoking your business continuity plan, there are a number of aspects that will involve communication. (Item #2) Email's primary role as a communications vehicle means that, in an actual disaster, the inevitable outage not only hampers the running of the business, but significantly curtails the business's ability to respond and recover from the disaster in the first place. (Item #3)

These examples of inappropriate crisis communications policies, culled from real-life situations, will provide a tongue-in-cheek guide about what NOT to do when your organization is faced with a crisis. (Item #4) Here’s everything you wanted to know about the John Edwards lesson of career implosion - and what you can learn from it. (Item #5) It’s not easy to get senior management to actively support crisis communication plans. (Item #6)

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