Listen to a Brief Intro of Crisis Communications Handbook (4.53 Mins)

Crisis planning and communications is an integral part of good management practice. By anticipating potential problem areas, identifying solutions and being prepared you instantly remove a lot of the confusion and anxiety when a crisis does occur.

If people know what to do, they can get on with performing their designated tasks immediately and, as a team, tackle the problem and get back to normal as quickly as possible.

The recent BP Gulf oil spill, the Chilean mining disaster and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami all illustrate the importance of effective crisis communications.

The business world is littered with the corpses of companies that said “it will never happen to us”. When those companies were hit by a crisis they were totally unprepared. In most cases reputations were irreparably damaged, shareholder confidence was lost, sales vanished and ultimately they went out of business.

Every company and organization could one day find itself facing a crisis, and how it is handled in the first minutes and hours is crucial. If handled well, you can manage the crisis, and the purpose of this book is to assist you in that process.

This handbook consists of an easy-to-follow five-step process that covers everything you need to know for successful crisis communications and issues management.

• Step 1 is all about planning – why you need to plan, what you need to plan for and against, how to develop a crisis communications plan and how to practice, practice, practice to make sure it works and is kept constantly up to date.
• Step 2 focuses on the Crisis Communications Team, how to select team members, allocate responsibilities and provide media training.
• Step 3 concentrates on how to handle a crisis from the second you are alerted to it until the time it is over and it is safe to resume normal operations.
• Step 4 is mostly about handling the media but it also focuses on all the other stakeholders, both internal and external, that need to be kept informed if you want to successfully manage the crisis.
• Step 5 completes the circle. The crisis is over, but you now have to sit down and evaluate how things went. What worked, what didn’t work, what could be improved on?

The book is packed with cases studies, best practices, useful tips and checklists and real-life examples of critical do’s and don’ts.

Crisis management and communications is all about being ready. This book is your essential first step in being prepared.