After a disaster strikes, the crisis team's first job is
communication--especially spreading the word to employees about the
event and how the company plans to deal with it.
This can be as simple as a pre-recorded message on a toll-free
number that tells people not to show up that day, or as complex as
an automated system that calls members of a facility's
emergency crew and asks a series of questions to evaluate their
fitness for duty (such as "Have you consumed drugs or alcohol
in the past six hours?").
Most entrepreneurial companies can set up a calling tree where
each officer calls two employees, who in turn call two more people,
and so on down the line. Large or geographically dispersed
corporations turn to automated solutions from companies such as
Dialogic
Communications Corp., which can contact thousands of employees
in the span of a few minutes. "After 9/11, our systems handled
106,000 outgoing calls, starting 15 minutes after the first plane
hit," says Gene Kirby, president and CEO of the Franklin,
Tennessee, firm, which caters heavily to the financial services
industry. Clients can call in to activate the system remotely,
record a message, and have it sent to everyone or to select groups
of employees.
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But employees are just one audience. Businesses also need to
assure customers, suppliers, shareholders and the local community
that the company is intact and the situation is in hand.
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"The first 48 hours of a crisis are critical, and
misinformation fills a vacuum," says Epoch 5's Heaviside.
"If a crisis hits and employees are not prepared, a lot of
misinformation can get out there and really damage a
company."
When the Oak Tree Farm Dairy in Huntington, New York, burnt to
the ground in October 1997, it called on Epoch 5 to handle
post-disaster communications. On the dairy's behalf, the firm
sent letters to customers the next morning assuring them their milk
would still be delivered (Oak Tree had made arrangements with an
out-of-state bottler in case of such a disaster). Epoch 5 also made
presentations to local civic organizations about Oak Tree's
rebuilding plans, took out a full-page newspaper ad thanking the
firefighters, and delivered flowers to neighbors whose lawns were
torn up by fire trucks. By August 1998, when Oak Tree finally began
building its new facility, its business had increased by 10
percent.
Heaviside advises formulating a communications plan that lays
out who's responsible for talking to the various parties, with
talking points for each person. That way, company lawyers can
review the comments ahead of time and avoid statements that could
come back to bite them in a lawsuit.
Despite its importance, a good communications plan is one area
even otherwise well-prepared companies often overlook. "Most
organizations have some sort of operational crisis plan, but the
majority do not have any communications plan," notes Larry
Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management in Louisville,
Kentucky. Without an effective way to communicate your
company's response to the crisis, "you can do everything
right and not get credit for it, and you might just as well have
done everything wrong."
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