Roberta J. WittyLast week, I attended the IntraPoint User Forum in Norway, and I came away with a real education about the extreme measures some enterprises in the oil and gas and transportation industries take to provide the safest possible environments for their workers and their customers. Just a couple of examples: tracking every single ship traveling near North Sea oil platforms to prevent collisions, and using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to muster the workforce for platform evacuation. The demands of protecting life and ensuring safety have new meaning for me when I think about what it takes to operate in such hazardous environmental conditions.
Linda Tavlin of Tavlin Training a crisis communications firm based in Paris (you can see the fruits of her work by watching how the Air France Flight 447 disaster is being managed in the press), asked the attendees a thought-provoking question: “Are you a commercial firm selling safety to your stakeholders, or are you a safety firm selling a commercial product/service?” Depending on your answer, your approach to crisis communications will be vastly different — and the impact on your brand and reputation will be damaged, preserved or enhanced as a result. Those that seeing themselves as safety firms have a crisis communications program focused on addressing the intangibles of a crisis — the emotional and the investigation/fact-based side of the incident. I didn’t have to think too hard to understand Linda’s basic point: that an enterprise that says, “We’re sorry this happened” immediately after a crisis is addressing the emotional needs of everyone involved, including employees and their families, customers, business partners and the community at large. (I admit I do struggle with the idea that saying you’re sorry about something means implying that you’re at fault. Maybe that’s a female trait?)
Linda made another important point: that a crisis communications program should focus more on investigating and remediating a crisis than on public relations. Lawyers, executives and other key stakeholders will inevitably want to put the firm in the best possible light following a crisis, but their efforts to do that may run counter to what really needs to be done from a formal and perhaps regulatory perspective. Misleading or insensitive statements can put your firm in a precarious position, so the inevitable media questions should be referred to authorized investigators. (Remember, every country, region and jurisdiction has its own approach to these issues, so make sure you have the necessary legal and regulatory knowledge before moving ahead.) Taking this approach achieves several key goals: It lets everyone know that there are many parties involved in the crisis, its impact and its investigation, and it diverts some of the media attention away from the firm to other parties. Perhaps most important, it focuses attention on fact-finding activities that can determine conclusively why the crisis occurred and lead to the implementation of mitigation controls to prevent it happening again.
One more thing: Pay keen attention to your executives and their ability to act as spokespersons for the firm. Their interpersonal skills may not be the type you need during the initial crisis and its aftermath. (You may need to shift spokespersons over the course of the investigation, based on their skill sets and your communication needs.) Empathy and respect for all involved — especially members of the community, the jurisdictional investigators and political leaders — will serve you better than bravado and posturing.
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Category: BCM and IT DRM Research Coverage Tags: Availability Risk, Backup and Recovery, BCM, BCP, BIA, Business Continuity Management, Business Continuity Planning, Business Impact Analysis, Business Resiliency, Contingency Planning, Continuity of Operations, COOP, Crisis Management, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Emergency Notification, Emergency Preparedness, Incident Management, IT Disaster Recovery, Mass Notification, Operational Risk Management, Pandemic Planning, Recovery Planning, Recovery Plans, Resiliency, Risk Assessment, Workforce Continuity
