CRISIS COMMUNICATION

Crisis communication

Crisis communication is sometimes considered a sub-specialty of the public relations profession that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation. These challenges may come in the form of an investigation from a government agency, a criminal allegation, a media inquiry, a shareholders lawsuit, a violation of environmental regulations, or any of a number of other scenarios involving the legal, ethical, or financial standing of the entity. The crisis for organizations can be defined as follows

Internal/employee communications

As the extent of communication grows, many companies create an employee relations (ER) function with dedicated staff to manage the numerous media through which senior managers can communicate among themselves and with the rest of the organization. Internal communication in the 21st century is more than the memos, publications, and broadcasts that comprise it; it’s about building a corporate culture on values that drive organizational excellence. ER specialists are generally expected to fulfill one or more of the following four roles:

Efficiency: Internal communication is used primarily to disseminate information about corporate activities.

Shared meaning: Internal communication is used to build a shared understanding among employees about corporate goals.

Connectivity: Internal communication is used mainly to clarify the connectedness of the company's people and activities.

Satisfaction: Internal communication is used to improve job satisfaction throughout the company.

Investor relations

The investor relations (IR) function is used by companies which publicly traded shares on a stock exchange. In such companies, the purpose of the IR specialist is to interface with current and potential financial stakeholders-namely retail investors, institutional investors, and financial analysts.

Public relations: issues management and media relations

Public relations

The role of the public relations specialist, in many ways, is to communicate with the general public in ways that serve the interests of the company. PR therefore consists of numerous specialty areas that convey information about the company to the public, including sponsorships, events, issues management and media relations. When executing these types of activities, the PR Specialist must incorporate broader corporate messages to convey the company’s strategic positioning. This ensures the PR activities ultimately convey messages that distinguish the company vis-à-vis its competitors and the overall marketplace, while also communicating the company’s value to target audiences.

Issues management

A key role of the PR specialist is to make the company better known for traits and attributes that build the company’s perceived distinctiveness and competitiveness with the public. In recent years, PR specialists have become increasingly involved in helping companies manage strategic issues – public concerns about their activities that are frequently magnified by special interest groups and NGOs. The role of the PR specialist therefore also consists of issues management, namely the “set of organizational procedures, routines, personnel, and issues”. A strategic issue is one that compels a company to deal with it because there is “ a conflict between two or more identifiable groups over procedural or substantive matters relating to the distribution of positions or resources”.

BY MKULA DENNIS