Collaborative Crisis Communication Toolkit

Collaborative Crisis Communication Toolkit

Shawana Battie

Walden University

Business (practices, consumer products or services)

Lessons Learned

1. Legal Risk Analysis is an important factor in crisis prevention. Upper management sets the tone for corporate culture.
2. Prepare for every crisis imaginable.

        One of the key points of crisis communications is that crisis creates victims. The United crisis with the disabled passenger crawling down the walkway and the people who got sick after eating Chipotle is proof of that fact. Retailers like Zara also creates victims by setting an unethical corporate culture based on racial profiling and discrimination. Just as communication evolves so does the way we communicate. As professional communicators and PR professionals, it is important that we plan and anticipate for crisis situations that can erupt quickly and provide the business with unplanned visibility.

     Researching the retailer, Zara provided me with a valuable lesson about corporate culture and the legal risks involved when a company has an improper corporate culture. Upper management such as the CEO often set the overall culture and tone of the organization. If upper management presents an unethical bias the company is most likely to adopt the same culture. In a lawsuit filed this year, the plaintiff claimed that the corporate culture was set by the brand founder Amancio Ortega (O’Connor, 2015). The claim made by the former general counsel of Zara USA alleges that the owner was aware of the discrimination he faced.

    When you’re in a business that requires you to deal with millions of customers on a daily basis, it is important that the organizations communication team prepare for every crisis imaginable. Disabled passengers travel every day that require special assistance. A plan should be developed to assist personally passengers when a delay such as the one United faced presents itself.

Value to Stakeholders

    When a crisis strikes, the organization has to think from a stakeholders’ perspective.

Stakeholders often have something to gain or lose from activity involving an organization. Stakeholders include employees, passengers, competitors, disabled customers, shareholders, consumer action groups and unions. Zara shareholders also include customers who are African-American or dark-skinned. Attorneys, government regulators, investors, and employees are also stakeholders for Zara. Stakeholders affected by the crisis will need to be prioritized based on their importance to the longevity of the organization. It is best to make the key priority your own directors, management, and employees because they, in turn, will have to respond to many other people when the news of crisis spreads (Harrison, n.d).

    It is important that we consider stakeholders when delivering a relevant message. Internal stakeholders will want to know that managers are striving to bring the organization back to normality. Shareholders and creditors are concerned with how the crisis affects the financial health of the organization and the future financial risk involved. External stakeholders will want to know that resources are being devoted to the crisis and those involved. Zara customers may want to know how the organization plans to deal with its current corporate culture while other customers may want to know what United is doing to assure the safety of disabled passengers. Developing the right message for the right stakeholder and having a crisis communications plan can help mitigate the crisis. Shareholders place value in organizations that conduct business responsibly.

Annotated Bibliography

Harrison, K. (n.d) Learn the secrets of stakeholder communication during a crisis. Retrieved December 17, 2015, from http://www.cuttingedgepr.com/articles/crisiscomm_learn_the_secrets.asp

        Cutting Edge PR provides resources and informative articles on various Public Relations         topics. This website is useful in learning how to effectively communicate during a         crisis and how important it is to have a crisis communication plan in place.

Miller, P. & Smith, T. (2011). Insight: delivering value to stakeholders. Retrieved December 16, 2015, from https://www.theiia.org/bookstore/product/insight-delivering-value-to-stakeholders-1587.cfm

        This PDF provides insights, actionable suggestions, and examples for communicating         with stakeholders. This report gives in depth information on understanding the         expectations and perceptions of key stakeholders and how to effectively engage and         communicate with those key stakeholders.

Leisure/Entertainment

Lessons Learned

1)      Have properly trained staff and designate the right people to handle social media.

2)   Don’t delay! Have an effective prompt first response to set the tone and manage perceptions.

        During the weeks I covered crisis situations involving leisure/entertainment organizations, I learned some important lessons. It is better to be prepared for everything than to figure it out when the crisis happens. In conjunction with an unprepared staff; a delay in responses from the organizations high level management can make a crisis situation worst.  Having an uninformed public leads to negative perceptions of the company. It is best to handle a situation promptly and provide details as they become available.

            I covered two different crisis situations involving the entertainment industry. The Carnival Cruise Lines stranded ship crisis and The Napa Wine Train fiasco. Both organizations had one thing in common; both had unprepared staff who wasn't equipped to deal with the crisis. The old saying a failure to plan is a plan to fail comes to mind. Carnival Cruise Lines staff had no emergency plans in place to deal with the customers on board the ship. Everything from having non-perishable food on board to making sure the ships wiring systems were intact showed a huge lack of preparation. Improper backup systems and a CEO, who waited days to address the situation left the public wondering what was going on with the ship, as well as, their love ones aboard.