Crisis Communications Planning

Preparing a plan

1. Clearly state the mission in a crisis

• Everyone in organization needs to speak with a unified voice

• Communicator’s don’t resolve crisis, management does

2. Identify most critical publics and themes

• Develop comprehensive list of all publics you want to communicate with

• Don’t list all publics, only most likely to be important during a crisis

• employees, stockholders, news media, clients or customers, staff at site, government

3. Determine where crisis communication team members will be needed and location of any special operations centers

• Crisis site

• Emer. Ops Center (EOC)

• Main admin offices & field offices

• PR or communications offices

• Crisis communications center

• Media center

4. Define task-related communication roles

• Crisis manager liaison - sits in on upper-level meetings of managers who make decisions about resolving crisis and updates rest of team

• Employee liaison - keeps employees and families fully informed

• Spokesperson - sole voice for announcements and media interview

• Media facilitator - assists reporters in arrangeing transportation, interviews, providing background information, etc.

• Investor / financial community liaison - may be needed if publicly traded organization

• Writer/researcher/fact checker - assists spokesperson and media facilitator

• Call and email screener - appropriately routes crisis-related messages

• On-site monitor - observes and reports developments to liaisons and spokesperson

5. Prepare crisis team roster showing “starting line-up” with contact info

• Everyone in line-up should be identified by current job title and department they work in

• Choose starting line-up before choosing backups

• Include office phone numbers, email addresses, cell phones, home phone, and any other info needed to ensure team can be reached 24/7