2020 continues coming at us relentlessly. The fabrics of our lives, our businesses and our society continue to fray with no end in sight. We watch our organization wrestle with the challenges, we work to do our part to preserve output, services or products. Then we have to commiserate with coworkers as they head out the door as victims of layoffs, cost saving measures or the dreaded reduction in force.
Then we look around and realize that, for now, we are the survivors. We still have our jobs. Then the reality begins to loom: We don’t just have our jobs, we have the responsibilities of those no longer with us. We have more to do than before, we’re more stressed than before and we have less budget than before. We’re survivors living in an environment where our responsibilities have grown and our support system has dwindled.
At these times, we all tend to revert to the tyranny of the urgent. Our lack of time and attention leads to multiple mini-crises where the squeakiest wheel gets the grease. We spin from crisis to crisis in a frenetic effort to get ahead a little bit, long enough to think. But that moment never comes. We are understaffed and overworked.
The monster under the bed
But what about the real crises, the reputation-challenging, resource chewing events that are always looming in the background, the real monsters under the bed? Response planning has always been one of the important tasks in every organization. We know it must be done, we know it’s far more effective to practice preparation instead of response, yet we all desperately wish that for right now, it would just wait. We’re just too busy with our daily roar and rumble.
But by definition, crises don’t wait. They happen, always at the worst possible time. Guess what? Our current operating environments ARE the worst possible time. Staff reductions, changing job responsibilities, stress and social upheaval all contribute to an increasing probability that someone, somewhere will do something wrong, a maintenance delay will cause equipment failure or someone’s overt actions will lead to a genuine crisis. It’s more likely now than ever.
Are you ready?
You’re not as ready as you were before 2020. You don’t have staff, you don’t have budget and you don’t have the attention span. You’re stretched and stressed, and any plans you had in place are steadily going out of date. They may even be on the wrong shelf in the closed office, accessible only by a terminated employee. The bad news is that 2020 has made crises more likely to occur, while also removing the resources to be properly prepared or to respond properly.
What can you do?
Focus on actions that give the greatest benefit for the smallest outlay. Here’s a list of economical but impactful actions you can take:
- Conduct a Crisis Communication Plan review to determine if your plan is ready. Look for outdated names, contact numbers, resources or protocols. A good review will identify the most important shortfalls that must be addressed to ensure that you can even activate the plan. A quality review will provide a list of issues that must be addressed and specific suggestion for how to resolve each one.
- Conduct needed Plan revisions. As a general rule, people who know something is broken also know how to fix it. A good Plan reviewer will also be able to effectively address all identified issues. Let them do so. You don’t have the expertise or the time to do this.
- Coordinate Plans. You don’t have to wait until an incident occurs to be more ready for it. Your organization holds one or more Facility Response Plans/Emergency Response Plans/Emergency Action Plans … multiple names for response plans that direct the actual physical response to a range of possible incidents. These plans represent the most likely events, and they include a great amount of detail that will assist communicators as much as it will responders. Have your expert integrate your organization’s response plans with your response communication plans. All the data is there, what you need is the brain that connects the dots. Your brain is busy, so have your Plan reviewer perform this role.
- Create a Response Communicators’ Quick Guide. Your training horizon is smaller now, your attention span is shorter. You’ll have a hard time maintaining or retaining knowledge and readiness. Bolster your response capability with an effective Quick Guide that will walk you through the initial critical hours of response communication. Guess who can make this for you? That’s right, the same communication professional who conducted Plan review, revisions and coordination.
- Take training that matches your time and budget. The Response Communicator Quick Guide is a training tool as much as a response tool. Since the Quick Guide is designed to help you perform critical communication functions in the first hours of an incident, it can also be used in a training session of the same time span. Virtually. A communication professional can lead you through the Quick Guide and a practice scenario. Train at your desk, with your tools, on responses likely to occur with your organization. Do it in as little as two hours.
Do it.
You can build and retain critical response capability in a time-effective and cost-effective manner. These are all starting points for effective crisis communications. Each action can be tightly budgeted and each action builds on previous actions. Take the work off your plate by giving it to a trusted, professional communicator. Spend what time you have to focus on crisis communication by focusing on the outcome of this process.