Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message

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Internal Crisis Communications

In a crisis, will your employees be your allies or your enemies? If you said your allies, how do you know?

We were retained some years ago by a large multinational consumer products company to put together a proactive comprehensive crisis management and crisis communications program. In meeting with senior management and outlining our proposed plan of attack, we discussed conducting benchmark interviews with large swaths of employees in various locations and across many job descriptions, from the shop floor up to the executive suite. Senior management balked, saying that this was a waste of time. We countered with a compromise proposal: let us at least begin, and if the interviews yield no results, we will abandon ...