6 in 60 -- Tackle Crisis in Your Organization

6 IN 60 Six Steps to Survive the First Sixty Minutes of Your Crisis "Most businesses are one major crisis away from serious financial set back." ­­Pamela H. Vines of Troop Public Relations “If you are a corporate executive, you need to make crisis preparedness and crisis management an integral part of your business planning.”

– Rich Klein of LawFirmsPR “The secret of crisis management is not good vs. bad, it’s preventing the bad from getting worse.”

– Andy Gilman of Comm Core Consulting Group "Every company, large or small, must prepare for crisis because unfortunately, crisis is coming." ­­ Pamela H. Vines of Troop Public Relations

WWW.TROOPPR.COM

Contents 03

Introduction

04

Are you REALLY in Crisis?

05 06

List of The Six Steps in the First 60Minutes Steps One through Six

18

About the Author

19

Thank You and Contact Information

20

For Additional Crisis Information

Introduction

Are you in Crisis?

Unexpected events happen when you least expect. They disrupt the normal way you operate.

In most cases, if an event threatens your business’ reputation, hurts your employees, or causes you to lose money, you're in crisis.

Three types of crises that happen most often are: reputation-related, health and safety, and financial losses.

Most unexpected events happen inside company walls and they aren't full-fledged crises; they’re issues. Company leadership can handle issues.

Consider the following three conditions. If you're experiencing all three, you're in crisis: 1) The event or incident disrupts your normal work activity. It demands your full attention. The employees are also stunned and uneasy. No one is able to focus on day-to-day tasks.

2) The event requires an immediate and coordinated response from your key personnel. If one department can handle the event in a vaccum, it’s likely only an issue; not a crisis.

3) The event has the potential to attract extensive media attention. Employees are Tweeting and Snapping and the television vans are camped outside the front door. Media attention surely signifies a crisis.

04

SIX STEPS TO TAKE WITHIN 60 MINUTES

1 REMAIN CALM

2 GATHER IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM

3 FINE TUNE YOUR MESSAGES/STRATEGY

4 PUBLISH YOUR HOLD STATEMENT

5 INFORM INTERNAL AUDIENCES

6 CALL YOUR CRISIS MANAGEMENT EXPERT

WWW.TROOPPR.COM

One

WWW.TROOPPR.COM

REMAIN

CALM

That's right. Breathe. Stress and anxiety aren't positive attributes during a crisis event.

According to Health.com, the good thing about stress is that it's designed to protect us from danger. Stress triggers a hormonal fight-orflight reaction that gets us ready to beat-feet and remove ourselves as far away from the hairy situation as possible.

During a crisis, however, we can't grab our key and run for the door. Despite the symptoms of your quickening heart and breathing, you will have to stick around and take care of your employees and customers.

Such reactions can lead to irrational and inaccurate decisions for your employees and the

organization as a whole.

At times like these, remember to slow down, breathe, and gather your thoughts. Grab a quick drink of water (not coffee or other caffeine-laced beverage).

Don't let panic paralyze you and cloud your thoughts.

Everyone on your crisis team has a role to perform.

Consider your part and how you're going to contribute to toward helping to manage the crisis.

Also remember that some supervisors or even members on the management team won't perform will under pressure.

You may have to step in and be the, positive and calming force for your colleagues, the employees, and our customers.

7

Two

WWW.TROOPPR.COM

Gather together

NOW Gather your Crisis Team in the conference room right away.

Now. Your action team is the group of people in your organization who are able to make hard and fast decisions such as your COO, CFO, Division Heads, the Communications Expert, the CIO, and your Legal Expert.

You might also need to bring in other subject matter experts from around the community.

The key is, if external people aren't present, start the discussion without them. You can't wait for an hour for people outside your organization arrive. An option may be to dial them in on the phone.

It's important to get started right away with reviewing roles and responsibilities.

Your crisis team’s job is to: 1) Quickly analyze the incident, 2) Determine its impact on the organization, and 3) Agree on the organization’s next steps.

Also, choose who among you will be the spokespeople for the crisis.

Ideally, you would have prepared for how your team will work together, and have practiced scenarios well before any crisis occurred.

Note: True-t0-life scenarios or exercises are a great way to rehearse the team on these activities. Practicing crisis scenarios helps underscore where the team needs improvement. Practice also gives the spokespeople time to receive necessary 9 media training.

Three

WWW.TROOPPR.COM

Review Messages &

STRATEGY Every crisis is different and calls for a different set of actions. If you own a bakery, you'll use a different set of actions for a reputation crisis than you would for a natural disaster crisis.

When you and your team come together, quickly review courses of action and choose one that will help you manage the crisis best.

It’s important to: 1) analyze your organization and industry, 2) develop talking points and discover answers to initial probing questions, and 3) know how to assess and communicate with your internal and external publics.

Consider making an appointment with a crisis communications firm to discuss how you might conduct a vulnerability study at your workplace.

In this way, you'll have a grasp on what types of events are most likely to affect your organization.

In the meantime, start thinking about how you will respond to media and public query.

In most cases, the quality and transparency of your response has more of an influence on your organization's reputation than the actual event!

11

Four

WWW.TROOPPR.COM

Publish Your Hold

Statement Your customers, stakeholders, and the news media will want to know details about your crisis as soon as possible.

They're waiting to hear from you. But you're busy. You're gathering and meeting with your team. Now that you know what the specific crisis is that's affecting your organization, you and your team need time to plan details and coordinate your strategy.

While you're taking the needed time to develop your full message, you can publish what's called a Hold Statement. In the business world, when you're presented a hold statement, it means your bank account funds are temporarily unavailability to you. The bank places a hold on uncleared checks, or on pledged funds, i.e. collateral.

In the communications world,

a hold statement has a similar meaning. You issue the hold statement to the public while you're temporarily unavailable to give a detailed account. This first, short statement, will satisfy the media and customers for a short while.

Making a statement, albeit a short one, will assure your audiences as you take time to prepare your full response and future strategy.

The best part is, this hold statement can be generic enough to address a variety of crisis scenarios.

The organization’s Crisis Communications Team should review holding statements often to determine if you need to revise them or to develop new statements that apply to your organization.

13

Five

WWW.TROOPPR.COM

Inform Your Internal

Audiences Whether you want them to be or not, your employees are your extended public and they are the people most likely to support and stand by you. They're most invested in the success of your company and typically, they're the most loyal.

That's likely why your employees are your most important audience. You should consider addressing their concerns, questions, and anxieties soonest. As stated earlier, people want to know what's going on. Trust that your employees will feel insulted if they have to find out about the crisis from watching the news.

You can use many forms of communication channels to inform them such as: a hasty

gathering (depending on the size of your organization), internal email, or word of mouth via first line supervisors.

You'll also need to inform and update all the categories of groups with whom you do business. Keeping your allies informed early and often will help dissuade them from turning into your enemies later.

Having your employees and other people you do business with speak accurately and positively on your behalf will help stop the spread of bad information.

You will still need to speak about the incident as a spokesperson but the additional "fan base" will minimize misinformation.

15`

Six

WWW.TROOPPR.COM

Contact Your Crisis

Expert

With the uncomfortable state of our world, organizations are finally understanding how important crisis communications training can be.

Business owners are starting to realize how key and vital communication can be during a crisis.

Knowing what to say to the media and stakeholders surely helps minimize the damage your business might suffer.

That's the good news. People are "getting it." The bad news is, businesses still remain unprepared overall.

Over 90 percent of organizations in this country continue to be either completely unprepared or significantly under-prepared for a crisis event.

That's because it's so tempting to think, “that won't happen to us” or “if we do get hit with something, we're smart and we can handle it.”

You definitely have smart people in your organization, but are they equipped to handle something they've never imagined happening?

While in front of a LIVE television camera, no less?

Remember, thousands of organizations get hit by natural and man-made disasters each day.

Sadly, all of them will have suffered less if they had a crisis communications plan developed specifically for their industry and their personnel. When the organization has no crisis communications infrastructure already in place, it's already lost.

17

About The Author Pamela H. Vines

Pamela H. Vines is a communications professional with over 30 experience. With a background in Defense, she's handled crisis situations involving high profile military cases and has trained its top leadership.

She was at the helm of Fort Campbell's infamous Barry Winchell Murder case and advised DoD regarding PR and crisis issues with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She also worked the incident at Abu Garib, the fratricide case of Pat Tillman, and a host of other military crisis incidents.

She's skilled at crisis management training, media response training, and reputation management.

After advising general officers and top leadership in the military, she worked in the defense industry as a communications consultant providing strategic analysis civilian and defense clients.

Current clients include individuals, businesses, and government entities.

Ms. Vines has earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Writing and Communications from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Master of Arts degree in Management and Leadership from Webster University.

Vines is also a best-selling author and continues to write a number of fiction and nonfiction projects.

18

Contact Troop Public Relations today for your FREE 45-minute crisis communications training consultation. It'll one of the best decisions you've made all week.

Thank You! Visit us at www.trooppr.com Continue the conversation and join us on: Instagram @pamelahartvines FB @Troop Public Relations Twitter @trooppr Email: info@trooppr.com

FOR ADDITIONAL CRISIS INFORMATION

CHECK OUT THE TROOP PR CRISIS BLOG www.trooppr.com/crisisblog

For more information on Pamela H. Vines published novels, visit: www.pamelahartvines.com

© Troop Public Relations 2016 | All rights reserved www.trooppr.com | info@trooppr.com Author photo : Pamela Vines