Crisis Communications
A crisis can happen at any time.
Most people think of a crisis as something where there is loss of life, for example the Paddington rail crash in 1999 or the crash of Air France flight 447 in June 2009. Most crises are much less horrific and yet still do an incredible amount of damage to your organisation.
At the time of writing this section these included:
- A product recall – Maclaren pushchairs recall
- Large layoffs – any number of big firms due to the economic recession
- Resignation or sudden departure of senior people – Marc Bolland CEO of Wm Morrison leaves unexpectedly for M&S
- Infringement of trade secrets or breaking the law – T mobile staff sell customer data to third party brokers
- Union strikes – Royal mail amongst others
- Fines – Hays Recruitment Company is fined £37.9 million for price fixing.
How you react to these crises will define how quickly you recover your organisational reputation. To think that good risk management will prevent such things from happening is wrong. To put in place carefully thought through procedures is the correct way to manage a crisis.
Strictly speaking Crisis Communications is a part of Corporate Communications. However, much of the preparation and many of the techniques required for Crisis Communications are unique. That’s why we have covered them separately under this section.
Below you will see links to a number of subject areas. We are always keen to add to these so let us know if you think there is something you would like to see added.
