How does internal communication help with crisis management?

Going through a major crisis can be a nightmare for any business, especially if it’s unprepared from a business perspective internal communication. For a crisis management efficient, there should be no difficulties in communicating with your employees, which would cause serious inconveniences. Here’s what you can do to keep your team busy during tough times.

accepting the crisis

A company can make necessary organizational changes but still not overcome the crisis due to a lack of investment in internal communication. Prepare employees mentally for the transition.

“When a crisis happens without people having one preparation mentalcreates a chain imbalance,” wrote William Bridges in the book manage transitions (2003).

According to the author, one of the top mistakes companies make is to focus their energies on getting employees to learn a new way of working when they should be persuaded to leave. old processes. “Beginnings depend on endings. The problem is that people don’t like endings,” he says.

Bridges says a crisis has three moments, beginning with that final (Leave behind the way things were always done), the zone neutral (transition where the company has already left the old path behind but has not yet fully adapted to a new model) and the New beginning (Make sure the changes work).

Crisis management tips

To guide your employees through these three momentsthe author proposes some communication measures that will help to overcome the crisis:

• Talk to people about the transition process so they understand that the Road can be a challenge and that the difficulties will not just be misplanning by the company.
• help them understand why is there a change. When employees acknowledge problems first-hand and give them first-hand knowledge, for example by talking to dissatisfied customers, there is a certain level of uneasiness about where the company stands that makes them inclined to accept change.
• To express clear what you want your employees to stop doing and what you expect from them. It is not enough to create guidelines such as “putting more focus on the consumer” or “working in a multidisciplinary manner”. You need to know exactly what to expect.

Prepare for the future

The author also advises the company to focus on this four actions Internal communication to reach the new beginning phase:

• explain that purpose and goals that the changes have so your employees can see why they should help achieve them.
• Get an idea of ​​how the changes will affect the lives of your team. To explainin detail and using practical examples, what the future of your employees will look like and how their everyday work will affect them.
• Do one Plan step by step what needs to be done to make the new beginning a reality.
• Give each employee a function and a role that must be met within this plan in order to make an effective contribution.