Written by James Fitzpatrick
Crisis communications is the planning and/or executing of strategic communications in response to incidents or issues (crises) with the intent of protecting an organisation’s people, stakeholders, operations, brand, and/or reputation.
Banksia Strategic Partners has specialist crisis communication consultants on hand who can provide strategic communication support at the nexus of policy, politics, and public affairs – often in crisis situations. They have helped manage Royal Commissions, front page media scandals, public protests, high-profile court action, major accidents, cyber-attacks, and regulatory investigations. Our team thrives when we operate in high pressure and highly sensitive environments.
Our approach is to work closely with your organisation to identify risks before they arise as problems, assist in the formulation of stakeholder and media engagement strategies as well as facilitate crisis communications training and exercising for your team.
Navigating a crisis is a stressful experience, but being prepared with a coherent, clear and strategic plan, ahead of time can help simplify the complexity of crisis situations.
Our team can help mitigate risks and the extent of prospective stakeholder, brand and reputation damage by providing a crisis preparedness program based on industry best practice and being available as surge support for live crisis communications response as needed. By responding rapidly to any public media and discourse, Banksia Strategic Partners can help you mitigate the risk of negative sentiment or misinformation spreading beyond control.
A strategic and proactive approach to crisis communications can help achieve the following objectives:
- Maintain and protect your brand, reputation, and operations;
- Maintain and develop your relationships with customers and other key stakeholders (including government);
- Manage queries and relationships with news media outlets and journalists, as required;
- Mitigate risks posed by incidents as quickly as possible; and
- Ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations related to cyber security and privacy, along with any relevant industry standards pertaining to best practice.
Typically, our suggested crisis communication preparedness program follows a cycle of four key stages:
Stage 1: Crisis Communication Review/Audit and development of a Crisis Communications Plan
Our crisis communications plans, relevant playbooks and supporting materials are structured in alignment with industry standards and global communication best-practice.
We then tailor our plans and processes according to your organisation’s needs and situation, along with our practical experience of responding to crises or critical incidents.
A key element of our crisis plans/processes are tried-and-tested matrices, rubrics, and templates for staff to easily follow and enact in the heat of the moment.
Stage 2: Crisis Communications Training
Banksia Strategic Partners can facilitate practical training to help empower your business leaders to be able to successfully embed and enact any crisis communication plan/process and engage successfully in stakeholder communications during an incident.
This training would be personally delivered by Banksia’s crisis management and crisis communications specialist, James Fitzpatrick, who is professionally qualified in crisis management and has experience working with organisations across Australia, the United Kingdom and North America to prepare for, and respond to, a wide variety of crises critical incidents. The training would be co-facilitated by Stephanie Hobbs who has extensive experience in media and public affairs and a proven track record of effectively managing sensitive and high-risk media issues. Prior to joining Banksia, she played a pivotal role working in the Victorian Premier’s Office to generate positive media coverage surrounding initiatives aimed at supporting jobseekers and significant investment in mRNA vaccines.
Part of the proposed training package can include media training for your spokespeople. Backed by best-practice and tried-and-tested academic theory, our communication and media training will empower your spokespeople with the relevant industry knowledge and hone their practical ability to cut through the noise and respond to difficult questions with life-like media simulation exercises.
All our training includes practical exercises in alignment with the relevant plans/processes, case studies, and supporting materials. Importantly, the training will be designed and conducted in a way that participants can look back on and refer to their session in the future to build a workplace culture that embraces an understanding of the risks, opportunities and obligations relating to effective crisis communications and crisis management.
Stage 3: Crisis Communications Exercise, Simulation, and/or Test
The most effective way to prepare your team to handle a crisis effectively is to empower them with an opportunity to enact their plan in a no-fault learning environment that simulates a realistic scenario. Crisis exercises or simulations are also invaluable for putting new plans to the test to reveal any gaps or inefficiencies.
Our crisis simulations and exercises align with industry standards and facilitators James Fitzpatrick and Simone Gandur have experience leading simulations for a wide range of organisation types across a number of industries.
Banksia Strategic Partners can prepare and facilitate tabletop exercises (from a communications perspective) that replicates a high-risk scenario in consultation with you. This service includes researching realistic scenario detail, preparing scenario injects (e.g. media calls, stakeholder enquiries, partner disruptions, government engagements, and emergency service liaison), facilitating the exercise (est. four hours depending on scope), providing a team in the control room to administer the injects, recording the exercise, facilitating a debrief and providing a high-level post-exercise report.
Stage 4. Live Crisis Communication Response and Recovery
Banksia Strategic Partners can help mitigate risks and the extent of any prospective stakeholder, brand and reputation damage by being available as surge support for live crisis communications response as needed. By responding rapidly to any public media and discourse, Banksia can help you mitigate the risk of negative sentiment or misinformation spreading beyond control.
A strategic and proactive approach to crisis communications can help achieve the following objectives:
- Maintain and protect your brand, reputation, and operations;
- Maintain and develop your relationships with customers and other key stakeholders (including government);
- Manage queries and relationships with news media outlets and journalists, as required;
- Mitigate risks posed by incidents as quickly as possible; and
- Ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations related to cyber security and privacy, along with any relevant industry standards pertaining to best practice.
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is a “crisis”? – In a business or organisational setting, a crisis is any event that restricts or prevents your ability to operate or threatens your brand and reputation. Cybersecurity breaches, government inquiries, customer dissatisfaction, competitor attacks, financial instability are all contemporary examples of the types of crises organisations at the nexus of policy, politics and public affairs could face at any time.
What is a crisis communications plan? – The crisis communications plan is a key component of a business’ preparedness program. Effective crisis communication plans consist of formulas, models and response plans like the “Attribution of Responsibility Formula”, the “Apology Model” or the “Crisis Message Model.” If an organisation develops, tests and practices their crisis communication plan, they will be in a sound position to respond promptly, accurately and confidently during an incident, and in turn maintain stakeholder confidence.
When should an organisation make a crisis communications plan? – The way to be able to respond in a crisis to your stakeholders in a timely and organised fashion, is to prepare a crisis communications plan before any major events occur. The best crisis communication plans will also align with your organisation’s broader strategic goals making junctures like strategy and planning days an ideal time to work out your crisis communication plan at the same time.
What is the difference between crisis communication planning and crisis communication training? – Consider a crisis communications plan as your organisation’s blueprint and training as the acquisition and application of skills. Both as essential to best position your organisations to adequately deal with a crisis scenario. Banksia Strategic Partners are experts in crisis communications training and can help facilitate your organisation’s development of both a sound academic and evidenced-based understanding of crisis communications theory and gold-standard practical skills.
What does crisis communications training involve? – Crisis communications training builds upon your organisations crisis communications plans, transferring and developing skills that will enable members of your organisation to effectively execute your plan. Training facilitated by Banksia Strategic Partners includes both practical exercises, as well as the explanation of processes and analysis of case studies and crisis theories. All the content developed will be for your organisation to keep and will form an important part of your crisis communications knowledge that you can refer to in the future.
What is the difference between crisis communications training and crisis communication testing? – If we consider your organisation’s crisis communications plan as your blueprint, and training as learning the skillset, then crisis communications testing is your opportunity to practice your newly developed skills in a safe and controlled environment, as well as a chance to “stress test” your plans and procedures. Banksia Strategic Partners’ crisis communication testing and simulation sessions replicate a high-risk scenario that is relevant to your organisation, allowing your organisation to practice its response strategy and to receive feedback on its effectiveness.
How often should an organisation test their crisis communications? A crisis communications plan should never be considered as a static document. Instead, just like your strategic plan it should be reviewed on a regular basis as your organisation and/or industry’s situation develops and changes. An appropriate ‘rule of thumb’ then, is to review your crisis communications plan annually or after experiencing an incident as part of the debrief and review process.
My organisation is currently in a crisis; can we be helped immediately? Best practice is to always have a developed, practiced and strategically aligned crisis communications plan ready prior to ever needed it to be executed, however, best practice isn’t always possible. As such, Banksia Strategic Partners are on hand to offer rapid-response crisis assistance in relevant circumstances.
