Can internal communicators do more during crisis situations?

The Mumbai terror attacks paralyzed the nation and spurned the world to look at terrorism in a new vein. India’s 9/11 was covered extensively on all possible traditional and new media vehicles. The reach and dynamism of You Tube , Twitter, Flickr and other popular sites helped spread the word at the speed of thought.

 

While outraged citizens bayed for political heads to roll, it exposed the vulnerability of organizations – not only those which had operations in the city but had interests in other parts of the country and globe. Unprepared leaders reacted slowly, others shared information which employees received minutes after the siege started, some chose to ignore the sentiments and hoped it would pass while still others allowed rumors to run amok.

 

The timing of these attacks also proved the inability of some organizations to manage two different situations at the same time – the economic slowdown itself posed numerous challenges in communicating strong messages with its employees, for example, cost cutting measures and status quo on bonus and increments.

 

What could internal communicators do better in such scenarios? How can communication still continue in a tangible manner when life is so unpredictable?

 

I believe no crisis can be predicted but preparedness involves commitment and diligence even when life is under control. As internal communicators, we own a large chunk of the responsibility to ensure the lines of communication are open, the relevant communicators or their back-ups are available and messages are percolated in a coordinated manner.

 

There are a few potential opportunities which internal communicators must always keep a tab on.

 

a) Get leadership buy-in even if there is no direct impact on business and your organization does not have a center in the affected location. You can never say when the next disaster calls.

 

b) Monitor spikes in conversations around sensitive subjects and have a point of view – if you have informal distribution lists or a forum, enroll into the group or get the moderator to understand the relevance of internal communication. That also goes for external sites, blogs, alumni networks, social forums among others. This will help you map your messages with what employees are hearing or have heard.

 

c) Know your key ‘word of mouth’ influencers and provide them with enough material and messages. If you are aware of those who spread the word in the corridor and at the water coolers, connect 1:1 with them and get their confidence.

 

d) Put a message out from the leadership building in personal perspectives, what the organization is doing for the safety of its employees and how soon you can come back with an update. Employees want honest, direct and transparent communication. Don’t deny them. A regular leadership blog can help connect extensively with employees.

 

e) Revisit your basic communication plan which covers who, what, when, how and why of the messages. Empower managers to have conversations with their teams – research points to employees having more faith in their immediate supervisors than anyone else. Provide them with useful FAQ material. Create standard e-mail templates and drafts which they can use for sharing information. I have noticed a significant amount of time saving in thinking and framing sentences.

 

f) Are your internal systems up to date? At this crucial juncture, missing out on important employee data can result in losing precious time. Periodically update, conduct random checks all in the effort of ensuring currency of information.

 

g) Can you think of ways in which employees can contribute to the post crisis scenario? Maybe be by lending a helping hand with NGOs, displaced people, working with the local authorities on leveraging technology – ethical hacking for instance?

 

I chanced upon a discussion thread posted on Linkedin’s Marketing & Communication forum which called upon stringent measures at a macro level to overcome crisis. What it did not ask was ‘what can communicators do to improve basic connection in such scenarios’. I recommended we pool our resources and ideas to create meaningful messages to share with our stakeholders.

 

Your views?