The following appears as a commentary by Edward Segal in his weekly “Crisis Ahead” podcast. Watch previous episodes and subscribe to his podcast at this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwx26phRVnXdnnaJt71cqZw An important aspect of crisis communications is to have a strong and consistent message about your disaster, scandal, or other emergency. Do not allow the people who represent your company in a crisis say different things to different audiences at different times for…

The following originally appeared as a commentary by Edward Segal in his weekly “Crisis Ahead” podcast. Watch previous episodes and subscribe to his podcast at this link. A best practice for responding to a crisis is that as soon as you see or hear there is a problem, don’t wait to do something about it. In the past few weeks we’ve seen examples of companies and organizations that have taken decades to do something about racism, racist policies, and racist practices. For any…

Crisis management expert and author Edward Segal, writing in an article posted on CommPro.biz, said decisions by state governments about reopening their economies in the middle of the pandemic provide nine important lessons on the best and worst ways for companies and organizations to recover from this or any crisis. Segal said the lessons include knowing the full scope of the crisis, confirming the crisis is over, ensuring the crisis does not return, having the right priorities, and being…

My new article with advice for preparing coronavirus crisis communication plans for the employees of companies and organizations is now online at HR.com. As I note in the story, “If you don’t have a plan for communicating with employees about the rapidly unfolding coronavirus crisis, you need one. Now. It is just a matter of time until people start asking you how COVID-19 will affect them and their company — if they haven’t asked already. Creating a plan is essential for…

We’ve had to deal with several health crisis situations over the past 100+ years, such as the Spanish flu in 1918, polio, AIDs, etc. In general terms, the response by federal governments to these and other public health emergencies has often followed a similar and disappointing pattern: ignore it, deny it, hope it goes away, finally acknowledge the severity of the crisis, then play catch-up to deal with it. We are now in the “play catch-up to deal with it” phase of the coronavirus…