Today’s world is filled with a litany of options—from the kinds of cereals lining grocery store aisles to the number of TV shows available to stream; there are plenty of scenarios where we can see the applicability of the sage advice that “less is more.”
And when it comes to corporate crisis communications, that’s often been the prevailing strategy: Involve the fewest number of people possible so you can minimize the risk of leaks, streamline decision-making and keep messaging consistent. Bring the most important teams—usually legal, risk and public relations—into the situation room to quickly hash out the details of how you’re going to respond to employees, customers and investors.
But with the definition of crises moving beyond natural disasters or corporate misconduct and into the realm of social and political movements, it’s time to rethink the idea that less is more. For one, a majority of people (regardless of political ideology) now expect companies to speak up more about important and potentially controversial topics; 61% of respondents in a Just Capital survey said CEOs have a responsibility to take a stand on important societal issues.
And a recent Edelman Trust Barometer report on business and racial justice found 71% of survey respondents said their employers are the only trusted institutions to address racism in the U.S.
Beyond public opinion, crisis responses—or non-responses—can have lasting effects on companies. Target’s quarterly sales fell for the first time in six years last year when consumers took their money elsewhere in response to right-wing backlash—and the company’s response to that backlash—over the store’s Pride Month products, for example.
Of course, it’s not lost on leaders that people are expecting more of companies at a time when getting out in front of crises is fraught with landmines. That’s why it’s time to bring regular employees, not just top leaders, into the fold. Before you wonder if I’ve lost my mind suggesting you bring more people in to handle a crisis, hear me out.
An organization’s ultimate goal when a crisis hits is to return to typical standard operating procedures as fast as possible to ensure organizational equilibrium. But that’s become increasingly difficult with a 24/7 news cycle and rabid social media consumption, and organizations can no longer try to sweep things under the rug. Nor can they consider only a handful of perspectives to craft their responses to those crises—because doing so ultimately could trigger another crisis.
What often goes unspoken, but is critical to handling a crisis effectively, is ensuring the organization doesn’t cause another crisis by its response (or lack thereof) to the current crisis. The best way to prevent a knock-on crisis? Expand the scope of perspective.
Choosing who to add to a situation room is a delicate task and one that must be done prior to any crisis occurring. In my experience, the best “crisis coordinators” are employees who aren’t managers, but individual contributors whom HR trusts to handle sensitive information. They’re willing to share the perspectives of their communities, while also understanding they cannot tell employees everything that’s going on, in order to protect the organization.
It’s a tricky needle to thread; employees may be reluctant to report to higher-ups on what’s happening in the community, while leaders may be hesitant to be forthcoming about not-yet-cemented plans. One way to streamline this process is by turning to employee resource group leaders. They often already have skin in the game and recognize the purpose of an ERG is to improve the overall workplace experience.
Once you’ve identified your crisis coordinators, it’s time to set them up for success by training them in media relations, government relations, legal dynamics and reputation management. By providing a framework to understand crisis communication basics, coordinators can then proactively help the company prepare for a crisis.
In this process, leaders are also creating a critical feedback loop for the organization, regardless of if a crisis happens. Why? Because in addition to receiving crisis training, these coordinators meet regularly with leaders to discuss what they’re hearing on the ground, and can relay to employees what is top of mind for executives. This continuous loop bolsters crisis preparation and provides a network of trust that can be leveraged once a crisis hits.
When that happens, an organization has roughly 48 hours to decide how it’s going to respond. Because you’ve laid the groundwork with crisis coordinators, you now know to bring them into the room along with the traditional crisis comms teams. You have a faster way to deploy a coordinated message, increasing the chance that the message lands well and that you can foreshadow any backlash that may come from the response or, conversely, silence.
A critical part of making this approach work is understanding the boundaries of coordinator and leader responsibilities. Crisis coordinators have a constant finger on the pulse of employees and know the sensitivities of the demographic groups they represent, making them great contenders for writing statements for their groups and gauging whether subsequent communication may be needed.
But they often don’t have experience dealing with formal and informal C-suite pressures, nor do they have an understanding of stakeholder issues that may contribute to how the company ultimately decides to respond. That’s where leaders come in; they must provide guidance to coordinators regarding risk assessment, gap analyses, stakeholder alignment and buy-in among peers and ultimately serve as ambassadors of the message.
Crisis communication, in real life
When the Black Lives Matter movement made headlines in the summer of 2020, I was working as the chief diversity officer at pharmaceutical company Astellas. While other companies scrambled to decide how to respond, we already had put together an interdisciplinary group to handle our communications, with crisis coordinators coming from 11 EIGs (employee impact groups), including military, Hispanic, women’s and more. The coordinators helped review internal and external statements, look at social media posts and consult on what perspectives should be included in a company town hall meeting.
Astellas leaders, in turn, were drafting a response, checking in with stakeholders to ensure we were addressing any health inequities, and bringing in culturally and linguistically relevant therapists to help employees work through an outpouring of feelings. The response we got from employees was remarkable. Not only did they feel the company cared about them as individuals, but it also allowed them to explore issues more deeply.
Soon after the initial response, the African-American EIG, for example, held a forum to provide space for Black employees to share their stories and for the rest of the company to build their allyship. Our response also contributed to Astellas being recognized as an ESG leader in the pharmaceutical industry.
Of course, bringing more people into the room doesn’t guarantee you’ll hit the mark with your crisis communication. But it improves the probability that there won’t be a critique of that communication or prolonged grumbling among employees that keeps them from the ultimate goal of getting back to business as usual. By approaching crisis comms with the idea that more is more, you’ll never let a crisis go to waste, but instead build and iterate to ideally find that, as Albert Einstein noted, “in the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.”
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