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Are You Prepared in Case of an Emergency?

Does your organization have a plan in place to respond to an emerging issue like a negative media article, a major reorganization or a controversial legal matter? According to a recent PR News article, PR pros anticipate a rise in crisis communications as we enter the new decade and it’s important that your organization not be caught on its heels.

The goal of managing crises is to mitigate the immediate danger, along with any subsequent serious negative repercussions–while maintaining leadership and transparency on the issue at hand. While we all hope we never have a reason to actually implement a crisis communications plan, it’s vital to have one in place. It is crucial to assure that all key players understand their role in a crisis and know how to initiate action so they are able to quickly and efficiently respond to any situation.

Here are four things to keep in mind when developing your organization’s crisis communications plan:

  1. Identify the most likely scenarios. You can never fully anticipate all the details of a potential crisis, but it’s important to think through whatever situations are most likely to occur and then determine whether any potential scenarios can be grouped together in terms of how you would respond. Identifying a few key situations will help keep your plan manageable and actionable and will allow your response system to be easily adaptable to a variety of situations.
  2. Determine a threshold for responding. Not every situation warrants a response, as sometimes the response itself will only add more fuel to the fire. It’s important to always assess the caliber of the threat and determine from there how best to publicly respond, if at all. Even if a response is not deemed necessary, it’s still important to monitor the situation and have some draft materials in place should things escalate.
  3. Determine chain of command and have appropriate back-ups identified. This is a very critical piece of any crisis communications plan. By having key members and back-ups identified, it allows your organization to quickly put your crisis plan in motion and ensures that everyone who needs to be in the know will be notified quickly. A crisis can occur at any time and, as much as we’d like to be, we all can’t be available 24/7. So, having a back-up person identified for each role in the crisis plan will guarantee that the plan progresses as it should, regardless of whether someone is unavailable.
  4. Develop draft materials with key messages that can be easily updated depending on the crisis. Time is of the essence during a crisis, so having outlines with key talking points and messages at the ready will help jump-start your response efforts and help you move quickly. Having some of these draft materials pre-approved will save valuable time during an actual crisis, which will mean your organization can respond as quickly as needed to all situations.

As Benjamin Franklin said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” If your organization doesn’t have a crisis communications plan in place, contact The Reis Group and we can work with you to ensure you are ready to set the right processes in motion should a crisis situation arise.

How to Stay Informed and Ahead of the Political Game

The dizzying pace of change in the Washington health policy climate under a new administration presents unpredictable challenges for those of us working in health care communications. Rapid-paced executive orders and seemingly contradictory announcements can create a chaotic information environment.

But as communicators, we can’t let this hold us back from doing what we do best. We must be prepared for anything that could impact our clients. And that’s why, even if we don’t work specifically in public affairs, it is important to stay on top of the swirl of news coming not only from the White House, but from the Hill as well. I’ve outlined here a few tactics that have been helpful for me in navigating the political landscape:

Closely Follow the Issues that Matter to Your Clients

In public relations, we are surrounded by news, whether it’s CNN playing in our offices eight hours a day or regularly monitoring The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other sites. However, it’s important to make sure that you prioritize the topics and issues that your clients care about. For hospital or health system clients, for example, start your day scanning health care outlets and sign up for email subscriptions from sites like STAT or Kaiser Health News. This way, you’ll always be on top of the most important health care news of the day and will be prepared if there is any breaking news that could impact your client.

Subscribe to Political Email Blasts

Subscribing to specific issue-oriented email blasts is a great way to stay informed of industry news, but now that we have a new administration and new majorities in Congress, it is important to touch all bases. One of the best ways to do this is to subscribe to POLITICO or The Hill newsletters and email blasts. These allow you to choose which topics are most important. They provide a narrow lens so that you can cut through the noise and focus on what matters to your clients, such as policy developments in areas including energy, cybersecurity, finance, and education.

Draft a Weekly Policy News Round-up

Another way to help your clients stay informed of relevant issues is to write a weekly round-up of specific industry news, with a focus on congressional actions or influence. Even if there isn’t a piece of legislation up for a vote that week, Congress holds hearings and briefings on many issues, or makes statements about plans for legislation. No matter what, there’s bound to be a good amount of relevant political news for your clients every week. It can be very helpful to gather all of that into one source for your clients. When I’ve done this in the past, our clients valued it. In fact, our weekly listserv newsletter grew to over 200 people and we were consistently reminded of how much our clients relied on it.

Follow Congressional Leaders on Twitter

More and more, senators and representatives are using Twitter to communicate with the public. Following legislators from committees that are pertinent to your clients could help you receive important policy updates as soon as they happen, which will allow you and your clients to respond sooner rather than later.

Taking these actions will help you stay ahead of the political chaos and make you all the more valuable to your clients.