Handle Crisis Like a Pro: Lessons From the Front Lines of Disaster Communication

Whenever there’s an emergency, personnel from the Red Cross are there to help, comfort and aid people who need it most. You’ll often find these dedicated humanitarians in the last place on earth you’d rather be. If one was looking for a master class in crisis communications, they could draw lessons from this 160-year-old humanitarian movement. With decades of disaster responses to catastrophic weather events, health crises and numerous wars and conflicts, the Red Cross offers a wealth of knowledge and expertise.

For a business communicator, a crisis can be any situation that could potentially inflict serious harm to your organization’s reputation. Whether it’s a cyber or ransomware attack, an act of violence or vandalism in the workplace, or a misinformation campaign targeting your social media accounts, preparing your organization for such events is a worthy investment.

No matter what type of disaster situation, good communication is always a critical part of an effective response operation. “A lack of information may lead people to create their own narratives and gives rise to misinformation, which can be shared quickly,” states Angela Hill, an international and domestic communications delegate for the Red Cross in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Over the past eight years, she has deployed to Ukraine during the ongoing conflict, the Caribbean during the COVD-19 pandemic, the Horn of Africa during a hunger crisis and Bangladesh where people were fleeing violence. Hill has also responded to numerous wildfires and floods in Canada.

Hill continues, “Providing accurate, timely updates about what the situation is, what help is available and ways people can stay safe and healthy, can reduce the stress and uncertainty for people whose lives are impacted. It also provides the opportunity to showcase the resilience of people and communities.”

My own 15-year Red Cross career included several domestic deployments for wildfire and floods, ending with the 2016 Fort MacMurray, Alberta wildfire, tagged as the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history at $9.9 billion CDN ($7.3 billion USD).

After leaving the Red Cross to take on leadership roles with two other health-related charities, I found these best practices learned from disaster response helped prepare my subsequent employers for a multitude of crisis scenarios.  

• Respond immediately when you become aware of a crisis, even if it's just a holding statement acknowledging the situation and assuring stakeholders that it’s being monitored. Commit to providing a more comprehensive update as soon as confirmed details are available and make sure to follow through on that promise.
• Immediately engage senior leaders and craft the key messages that will be delivered to both internal and external audiences.
• Appoint a senior leader as the primary external spokesperson and, whenever possible, have the same leader deliver key messages internally to ensure consistency and credibility.
• Proactively monitor reactions and be prepared to adapt your response as the situation evolves and new issues arise.
• Address negative feedback directly and respectfully, while actively correcting misinformation whenever possible.

Of course, this type of agile response relies on preparing in advance. Pre-planning and practice are crucial steps; there will be little to no time to develop protocols amid a disaster, so tools should be at least in draft form before the crisis occurs.

Preparing for a crisis response can be approached in several ways and should include the following steps.

• Table-top Exercises and Scenario Planning: Consider the types of crisis you might encounter and outline your responses for each. Document these scenarios, as one of them could very well occur.
• Establish Protocols and a Clear Chain-of-Command: When a crisis arises, who will be on the initial response team, what are their roles and how will decisions be made?
• Conduct Media Training: Ensure your spokesperson practices to refine their skills during training sessions, not in front of a live microphone.
• Empower Communication: Ensure that the communications function is truly at the table, providing strategic advice to leadership. 

Claiming Your Place: The Communicator’s Role

As communicators, we often strive for a seat at the leadership table to demonstrate our value. In a crisis, this seat should be a given.

Melanie Soler has more than 15 years’ experience directing disaster responses and operations for the Canadian Red Cross. She acknowledges the crucial role of communications in an overall disaster response operation. “As an operational leader, we need to convey our key messages on the situation and our role as it relates to the event,” Soler says. “The quality of our communications is a critical component to ensure our services are accessible and available to those who are impacted. The content needs to be tailored to a diverse audience, including internal, external partners, people impacted, the public and media.”  

Another trend in crisis communications that both Hill and Soler recognize is the growing importance and influence of social media. Hill feels it’s “more important than ever to be able to communicate with impacted people via social media and online. You need to be able to talk directly with your audience, as well as talking to them through and with media.” Soler says that activating a social media monitoring team is now standard operating procedure and that social media “acts as a channel to distribute key messages online and flag the need for additional or reactive messaging.” Despite this, Soler still sees opportunities to engage with key audiences through traditional media channels such as television and radio interviews and printed news articles.

Learning from the Past

After the crisis ends, a debrief process will help ensure lessons are learned and practices are improved for future situations. A simple, yet effective way to debrief is to ask your operational team three questions:

1. What worked well?
2. What didn’t go as planned?
3. What will we do differently next time?

Soler emphasizes that after the event, operations and communications “need to understand together what worked well, and what gaps or challenges emerged, so that we can incorporate the lessons for next time.”

By following these lessons learned from on-the-ground experiences of Red Cross disaster experts, communicators can prepare and execute an effective, open and transparent crisis communication plan when the time comes.