In time of crisis, the institution maintains public confidence, minimizes disruption in operations and mitigates reputational risks through the provision of timely, coherent, accurate and appropriate communication. Anticipation, timing, and competent response are critical elements of any crisis plan.
Guideline code
COM_01300
Mechanism
Mechanism
- The crisis management team should define a crisis communication plan that seeks answers to these questions:
- Assessment of the situation:
- What has happened?
- Who is affected and how?
- What have we done to solve this?
- What are we doing right now?
- When will it be solved?
- Protocols to manage the crisis including:
- Who is the official spokesperson?
- Who/how to handle inquiries about the crisis?
- The crisis management team should get the right messages to the right stakeholders at the right time, taking into account media availability.
- Monitoring and feedback systems should be in place using traditional and new media to provide a daily situation report on the crisis.
- The internal plan should:
- Inform staff of the relevant facts and the measures to address the situation. In the eyes of the public, every employee is a spokesperson of the institution;
- Inform staff of the relevant protocols, and to whom inquiries about the crisis should be directed;
- Keep channels of communication open with relevant institutions and opinion leaders that could be leveraged in the resolution of the crisis.
- There should be a post-crisis analysis of the effectiveness of the crisis communication plan to identify lessons learned and areas for improvement.
Parent
Structure
Structure
- The Head of Management should chair the crisis management team, consisting of selected senior executives, including the head of the communication unit.
- All communications should be centralized to ensure coherence of the message with the aim of maintaining, to the extent possible, business as usual with no disruption in operations or public service.
Title HTML
Guideline 11. Crisis management and communications
Type
Guideline_1
Weight
15