Create an internal communications taskforce

During a crisis, you’ll spend a lot of time thinking about what to say to your employees. What information do they need ASAP to stay safe/do their job? What tips can you offer to make things easier? What is the company doing to deal with the crisis?

This is a lot of work, and you don’t need the added headache of thinking about who should be saying these things, or how they are going to be delivered.

That’s where your internal communications services force comes in.

This task force is a group of internal comms department employees (at least two but this will depend on the size and the complexity of your company) whose role in the team is to create plans and procedures for communicating with employees during a crisis.

Their responsibilities could include:

1) Creating a list of comms channels that can be used to push notifications and content to ALL employees as quickly and efficiently as possible;
2) Making sure that all employees are aware of those channels and they know how to access and use them;
3) Deciding on prioritization and segmentation of messages - what needs to go out immediately to everyone, and what’s only useful to some employees and can wait.

Since this task force will be handling a very important aspect of employee crisis communication, you want to make sure they’re involved in everything your crisis management team does. They should be at the table when you’re discussing crisis scenarios, drawing up battle plans, and going through drills.

Read more: Effective communications during crisis | Employee communication services