The crisis plan
Public Relations represent the responsibility of those who take decisions. Only if top management appreciates correctly the importance of this activity, it can bring a maximum contribution to its efficiency. Sir John Harvey-Jones declared that the main activities that a president or director should deal with are strategic planning and Public Relations. He should personally be interested in the Public Relations of the organization. And this is because reputation is something that should be treated as any other good. The methods of protecting reputation should be taken into account when things go wrong – a sort of “reputation insurance”.
Many organizations have crisis plans prepared for emergencies. Unfortunately, this is a Public Relations area still developing. Reality shows that organizations should plan not to have “incidents”. But things get complicated here and are wider than Public Relations. The best crisis plan is the one minimizing the risk of not wanted incidents. But before the plan, there should be made an analysis of all the problems that may affect the reputation of the organization.
This plan will cover more things except for communication: safety, marketing, human resources, staff and others and the final variant will have to be signed by the executive director / president, after discussions, amendments and formal presentation in front of the leading board.
All the staff in the team in charge with the “crisis” needs adequate media training and be familiar with the basic information about the company in order to use them in interviews.