The Value Bridge - 3 Priorities in Crisis Communication

The recent, consecutive earthquakes in Venezuela, Colombia, and Indonesia are weighing heavily on many of us. The updates from partners and clients on the ground are tragic; many are completely devastated and have been forced to leave everything behind.

Having been in the coffee region of Colombia myself, returning to the Netherlands just before the earthquake struck, this situation hits close to home. ¡Gracias a Dios! I am safe and so are my contacts, but the impact on them, the rest of the local population, and the organizations operating there is immense.

When a country or region you do business with faces a crisis, your organization must act immediately. These are the 3 key priorities for your (crisis) communication to maintain the trust of employees and partners and to create internal stability:

1. Inform your home-base stakeholders immediately

Naturally, you should immediately contact all employees and representatives in the affected area to ensure their safety. However, do not forget the employees, freelancers, and other stakeholders back home in the Netherlands. Designate a single internal point of contact (the communications advisor or spokesperson) right away to manage the flow of information. Open a dedicated phone line.

Do you lack hard facts at this stage? Share process information instead. Let them know that you are actively managing the situation, outline the steps you are taking, and state when you expect to provide substantive updates. This immediately provides reassurance and builds trust. You will only gain the understanding of your employees if you communicate what you are doing, why you are taking certain steps, when more information will follow, and through which channels the organization will communicate.

By appointing a communications advisor or spokesperson to share information and ensuring they participate in the crisis management team, you guarantee that the information process receives high priority. This keeps communication a fully integrated part of crisis management, running synchronously with other operational efforts.

2. Prevent an internal information vacuum

Employees expect regular updates from their organization via the intranet or internal messaging groups. How are colleagues and partners doing? Where are they living now? What is the status of the reconstruction? What will happen to ongoing or planned projects in the region? There is a long list of questions on employees' minds.

If information remains unavailable, employees will spend hours online searching for answers themselves, or they will inquire with clients, partners, and competitors. This is a missed opportunity, highly inefficient, and a clear sign that employees are lacking information from their own organization. For some, it may even lead to disappointment because they expected the crisis to be acknowledged more profoundly within the company.

Another important reason to immediately contact colleagues or partners who have just returned from the affected region is that they may have their own stories to share. Give employees that space, encourage peer-to-peer contact, and respond with empathy to their stories if needed. By giving them a voice, the organization demonstrates not only an interest in the personal experiences of various stakeholders but also an openness to how individuals process a crisis.

If the informal grapevine moves faster than your official communication, your organization falls behind, which damages internal trust.

3. Pause scheduled marketing and communication campaigns immediately

Review all social media campaigns, advertisements, or regular newsletters scheduled for the coming days. Allowing commercial messaging to run uninterrupted during a humanitarian crisis signals a lack of empathy and can inadvertently damage trust in the organization.

If careful analysis reveals that a specific campaign or set of campaigns must proceed, clearly show that the organization acknowledges the impact of the disaster. This can be done, for example, by explicitly referring to the crisis, explaining why the campaign must go ahead, or, if applicable, introducing a longer response time.

Think carefully about how you want stakeholders to perceive you. If an organization only communicates about a disaster once and then immediately proceeds with business as light, stakeholders will not easily perceive it as a company with a social heart.

An organization with truly robust communication demonstrates its capability precisely when it matters most.

I hope these priorities will help you guide your organization and teams through a crisis with resilience.

This was an edition of The Value Bridge, a series in which I connect developments and practical observations with positioning, communication, reputation and value creation. Because value often arises in the smallest moments.