How to train employees to handle a crisis
Journalists often seek quotes from ‘insiders’—anyone who works there—when an organization is in a PR jam. Have you prepared staff at all levels on how to respond (or keep a lid on it)?
As any communicator who’s been through a serious crisis can attest, dealing with a damaging emergency and its aftermath is bad enough on its own.
What, though, can take a crisis from bad to utterly catastrophic in a nanosecond? Suddenly realizing your co-workers have not been advised or trained about contact with print or online journalists in such situations—with damaging results ensuing before the executive team’s very eyes, in real time.
Many organizations forget the power of their workforce in spreading company news.
Certainly, if the news is good, most companies want their employees shouting it from the rooftops. If the news is bad, employees can inadvertently (or quite purposefully) wield damaging impact through their own testimonials, whether it’s to a news reporter who has descended on the staff parking lot of your business or on a social media chime-in.
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