It’s a better crisis when your communications are calm, not chaotic

By its very nature a crisis tends to come out of the blue, but that does not mean a similar situation cannot be anticipated in advance.

Think about recent experience in Thailand and the Wild Boars team trapped deep within a cave system surrounded by rising floodwaters. No one had any idea that crisis was about to unfold, but most Governments and military organisations have a high level of preparation for events that need a rapid response and effective communications in a very short and intense period of time – even if they do not expect the eyes of the whole world to be upon them.

Unfortunately, there are still many organisations in Western Australia that are under-prepared or unprepared to handle a significant crisis in their operations that will both endanger their reputation and impact business continuity.

The area of least preparation is often in the communications skills, resources and infrastructure that can be rapidly mobilised to help out. Most organisations and their leaders completely under-estimate the number of individuals and infrastructure required to monitor, mount and manage an effective communications response to any form of crisis.

Most organisations of any scale now have Crisis Management Plans in place. Far fewer keep them up to date, test them properly or have the resources to call in to actually implement the communications component. The advent of social and digital media and the speed of communications is meaning the resources and infrastructure required is growing each year, not diminishing.

Clarity is the nominated crisis communications provider for a wide range of Western Australian organisations in the oil and gas, mining, construction, industrial, health and aged care, and educational sectors.

We see first-hand all the time how under-prepared and less than realistic many organisations are about their ability to communicate during a crisis. The result will be chaos, instead of calm.

It’s for this reason we have a fully set up crisis communications facility in our Subiaco offices that enables us to handle a crisis communications response from the proactive monitoring of major events involving thousands of people, through to handling an incident, undertaking rapid media training or holding media conferences for our clients.

We also head on site to help our clients handle a crisis, and our skills are tested by clients as we work with their teams during crisis simulations covering a wide range of scenarios.

If you haven’t thought about how you would properly resource your crisis communication needs then chat to us soon.