Don’t have a Crisis Communications Plan? We will create one for you.  A crisis can happen at any time. The key to successfully mitigating a crisis is to have a communication plan in place. In any crisis, all decisions must be made by key upper management who can analyze the situation and make critical decisions in a timely matter. Therefore, your staff must have specific direction as to who to contact regardless of the day and time. National research shows that a crisis issue has a greater chance of starting in the evening hours and weekends. Statistically, if a crisis is not handled properly within the first 4 hours, the chances of the crisis ending in litigation increases more than 80%.  Although some companies need more than others, at a minimum, each company should have the following documents:

1. Employee Crisis Communications Policy – Employees must know and understand how critical controlling the flow of information during a crisis. An Employee Crisis Communication Policy is an important document to have as part of your employee manual. If your company does not have a Crisis Communications Policy, Critical Point Communications can provide one for you.

2. Emergency Directory – From an operations standpoint, a crisis communications plan starts with an Emergency Directory of senior management 24 hours a day, 7 days a week contact information which the senior employee on duty can contact senior management at any time.

3. Media Calls – In this day of social media, cell phone cameras, Facebook live, etc., a crisis can leave your four walls as the crisis is happening. If the media finds out and you receive one or more calls from reporters, what do you do? How do you handle it? Ignoring the media makes the situation even worse. Both you and your staff must be training how to handle the media.

4. Media Shows Up at Your Door – Worse than media calls, what do you do if they show up on your property?  If not handled properly, the media can do coverage that can have a significant negative effect on your reputation and/or your bottom line.