3 Ways To Prepare Your Company for A Crisis
Although every business owner or manager anticipates running their company in such a way that a crisis never occurs, having a crisis situation arise is something that you should be aware of and plan for in the unlikely event that one may happen. To help you best plan and prepare for any type of crisis your business may come up against, here are three aspects of crisis management that every business owner should be thinking about on a regular basis.
Understanding The Type Of Crisis
In the business world, there are many different types of crises that could affect a business in multiple ways. According to Marshall Goldsmith of the Harvard Business Review, every crisis a business faces is simultaneously a public relations, ethical, legal, operations, and communications crisis. This means that for every crisis that arises or could arise, it’s vital that your business understand how to approach it from each one of these aspects. Once you’re able to understand that crisis, you’ll be better able to come up with a plan of attack that can best fix each area at the same time.
Creating a Plan of Attack
When creating your crisis management plan of attack, Tony Schmitz shares with ContinuityInsights.com that your approaches for specific potential crises should resolve the issue or issues while keeping your company’s big picture in mind as well. By doing this, you should be able to know what you plan to do about a crisis before the event ever comes on the horizon, effectively roll out your plan of attack once the crisis is upon you, and then continually stay prepared for any additional crises that could come about.
Responding Publically
Once your business is faced with a crisis, it’s up to you to frame the situation as best you can to the outside world. To stay ahead of any speculation, Michael Stelzner of SocialMediaExaminer.com suggests for businesses to repoond to a situation publically no less than 24 hours after the crisis occurs. This quick response time will not only help keep your internal communication accurate, but will also show to the outside world that you’re ready and willing to face this crisis head on.
When the time comes for you to respond to the public regarding your crisis, make sure you always have someone with good PR instincts doing the majority of the communicating. The communication should always be honest and should be mainly concerned with keeping the public in the loop about what has happened and what you plan to do to fix the issue. The last thing you want is for your communication to sound canned or defensive, which could just continue to spiral your problem out of control.
While we hope that your business never has a situation in which a crisis management plan is necessary, it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to being prepared for a crisis. To help your company stay in control when something unforeseen arises, consider using the above tips to prepare yourself for a business crisis.
