Poor crisis communications puts reputations at risk

Research by Synstar suggests that businesses are endangering their reputations through a muddled approach to communications during a crisis.

Not even half of UK businesses (42 percent) involve communications professionals in the management of crisis communications. Half of those surveyed (50 percent) rely on the already over-burdened services of a business continuity manager, or another senior business manager to resolve critical situations and communicate with both internal and external audiences.

More reassuringly, 58 percent would only nominate someone who is media trained to deal with every day press enquiries. One third (33 percent) selected spokespeople according to their area of crisis expertise rather than seniority.

George Williams, head of communications at Synstar, remarks: “The essence of crisis communications is keeping all those involved updated so that they are able to make informed and educated decisions regarding the respective incident. A business continuity manager can be doing everything to contain a situation but leaked information to employees, suppliers or the press can quickly undo this hard work.”

47 percent of senior IT business and business continuity managers would issue a statement to the media at a point when the crisis would affect their employee, supplier and/or customer relationships if they did not. However, 14 percent would wait until it would influence their share price or their investor relations if nothing was said, whilst 39 percent would only release a statement when they had ‘something to say’, by way of an update on how the crisis was being resolved.

www.synstar.com