Crisis Management

Crisis planning is like buying insurance. Purchasing automobile insurance is a way of planning for the worst case scenario, similar to how a crisis management plan is an important step for planning on the worst case scenario occurring for any organization. A crisis management plan helps manage any crisis as well as prevent a similar crisis occurring in the future. Below are brief critical steps to crisis management:

• Bring the entire crisis communication team together at a specific location - Determining where everyone should meet so that a plan can be arranged.
• Create a crisis management mission - Everyone on the team needs to be on the same page with a clear goal of the crisis.
• Identify your organization's most important public's and communicate with them first (e.g., employees, news media, stockholders, customers, etc.)
• Assign roles to each team member - Crisis manager liaison (Communicator between upper-level managers and crisis team), employee liaison (communicates to all the employees), spokesperson (publicly announces recent updates), etc.
• Disseminate the plan - Make sure each team member knows exactly what they are doing in case of a crisis and regularly update the plan.

It's also important that everyone in the organization understands the procedure of handling a crisis. This prevents panic and bad decision making in the organization. A clear crisis management plan has the ability to prevent further damage to the organization, prevent similar future crises, and keep a positive and confident quality to business decisions.