And more than considering, organisations should be actively looking at ways to mitigate and minimise risk and put processes in place to tackle a reputational event, should they face one.

According to an Oxford Metrica study, 82% of organisations will experience a crisis in any five-year period, so it is vital that organisations proactively engage in reputational management.

There are a number of proactive steps that organisations can take to monitor for threats.

What is a crisis?

Firstly, it’s important to determine what would meet the level of ‘crisis’ for you and your organisation. What one firm would consider a crisis event may barely register for another, so it’s important that you know what constitutes a crisis for your business.

A crisis is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘A time of severe difficulty or danger. A time when a difficult decision must be made’, while the Journal of Management Studies provides the following description of a crisis:

‘An organisationally based disaster which causes extensive damage or disruption and involves multiple stakeholders’ 

Some say that a crisis means that you need to take time away from the day-to-day responsibilities of your role completely to manage it, whereas an issue can usually be handled alongside your day-to-day tasks.

It’s important that you take the time to really dig into what would constitute a genuine crisis for your organisation. Scenarios including supplier delays, redundancies and negative customer feedback may all fall into the bucket of ‘issue’ rather than crisis. But it’s important to note that any mis-managed issue can turn quickly into a crisis.

Audit

By understanding the most likely threats facing your business and what constitutes a crisis – and most likely crisis scenarios – for a business like yours, you’ll be in a much better position to plan and put processes in place to mitigate these issues. A simple audit looking at the issues most likely to affect you can help you plan and prepare. These issues could include:

• Regulatory change that severely impacts your business
• Economic downturn
• Cyber attack

A check-in with department heads on a monthly or quarterly basis can help give real insight into the issues that are worrying the team – and help you plan accordingly. If for example you know that your IT security hasn’t been updated recently, you can put plans in place to ensure a review and upgrade of your IT support and security, thereby helping to negate any issues on this front.

This audit will not capture all threats, and even for the threats it does capture, there may be instances where your planning was unable to stop the crisis happening. However, simply having the issue on your radar and thinking about potential implications can help to create a proactive approach to reputation management.

Once you’ve recognised the most likely scenarios that would negatively impact your business, it may be worth putting some members of the team through a crisis simulator. In these simulators, your team will be immersed in a likely crisis scenario and have to navigate out of it. These simulators can also help to find any gaps in your team and ensure that they are given appropriate training and support, so that if a crisis does occur, they are prepared.

Monitoring

As best practice, organisations should be monitoring key terms associated with their business in the press and online. This could be by using Google Alerts, or more bespoke media monitoring tools like Kantar. These key terms should include:

• The name of your business
• Any key individuals within the business
• Spokespeople
• Competitors

You should also be looking at industry magazines and websites to keep up to date with latest developments. Signing up to news alerts from key titles can make this task a lot less onerous. Trade associations and regulators, such as the FCA, also provide email alerts for any announcements, so it’s worth signing up to these for the latest news.

Social media

Similarly, you should be monitoring social media. If you have an active social media presence, make sure you’re checking comments, responding and engaging in discussions. There’s plenty you can do to proactively promote your organisation and what you do via social media. And even if you don’t have an active social media presence, it’s worth checking in to keep up to date with developments, conversations and themes developing.

Spokesperson training

Your business should have at least one spokesperson willing to speak to the press. Even if you currently have no media exposure, you should have someone in mind to speak to the press if you’re asked a question from a journalist. And this spokesperson, or spokespeople, should undergo rigorous media training to ensure that their message is delivered with clarity, confidence and consistency.

It is vital that spokespeople, and messages, are aligned, so that in any reputational issue, the message stays the same regardless of the audience.

By training your spokespeople during ‘business as usual’, you can be sure that you’ll have a trained – and ready – spokesperson on hand if a reputational issue suddenly arises. It may be that the crisis requires a different spokesperson and refresher training, but the fact that you have a qualified, approved spokesperson should give others in the organisation confidence, should they be asked to step up in front of the media in times of crisis.

Rostrum hosts bespoke media training which provides an overview of the media landscape – encompassing national, trade and online publications and broadcast opportunities. Our course gives spokespeople the confidence and the tools they need to deliver their messages to the press and includes a practical, filmed interview with the trainer, which is reviewed and evaluated. 

Reputation Management Strategy Program

There are plenty of other considerations for firms who want to take a front-foot, proactive approach to communications on reputation management, and many of these can be found in a crisis strategy pack, or reputation management strategy programme as we call it at Rostrum. In a future article, we’ll explain the main areas of focus for this programme, and how you can involve others in order to have the best chance of minimising the threat and impact of any negative reputational issue.

This next article will give you the basics of a communications reputation management strategy programme, including key contents to include and the ideal format.