Crisis Management Planning: How to recover from a crisis
Crisis management planning is essential to every business. The recovery stage after a crisis is often underappreciated or skipped entirely despite its vital role in restoring confidence and trust in an organisation.
After a business experiences a crisis, it needs to act quickly, with a strategy already in place.
Adoni Media Managing Director Leisa Goddard says it is crucial to be prepared with a comprehensive corporate crisis management plan for effective communication post-crisis.
Here is a three-step guide to successfully repair and strengthen your company’s image after a crisis.
Take time to debrief
In corporate crisis management, it is important to allocate time to debrief with the team involved in managing and responding to the crisis. Recognise their efforts and point out things they did well to handle the situation. This not only boosts morale, but it builds positive relationships that will help things run more smoothly if another crisis occurs.
The crisis team need to come together to review the efficacy of the crisis communication plan by assessing its strengths and weaknesses. What worked and what didn’t? Honesty is important in this step so the team can make appropriate adjustments for best crisis management practice in the future.
“The key to improving practice is being completely honest and providing constructive feedback to each other. Ask yourself, ‘what actions could have been taken to better respond in this crisis management scenario,?’” Leisa said.
Create a recovery plan
It’s time to assess the damage caused by the crisis and develop a recovery plan for future crisis management and business continuity.
The recovery plan should involve these four tasks:
- Conducting a situational analysis
- Identifying all audiences
- Developing key messages
- Repairing digital image.
Social media offers the perfect opportunity to see how customers/clients responded to the crisis and gauge the general public view of how it was handled.
By constantly monitoring news and social media coverage and listening to client feedback, you can stay ahead of any issues and be quick to provide a resolution. Take active steps to control the narrative instead of letting the media and public arrive at conclusions.
Recognise opportunities
The final stage in the recovery process is to focus on the positives in your crisis response. Owning and accepting the problem is only the first part. Learning lessons from it, is what follows.
With every crisis, big or small, comes an opportunity to strengthen the company’s reputation and grow as an organisation. Often in a crisis, staff rise to the occasion and demonstrate leadership.
Look at crisis management case studies to see what has and hasn’t worked for other companies in similar situations.
“By looking at real-life crisis management examples, you can see what has worked for other organisations and incorporate these successful elements into your own approach,” Leisa said.
