Crisis planning in the age of AI

The number of threats faced by businesses and organisations has grown exponentially in recent years.

While businesses must still prepare for perennial threats like regulatory issues, product failures or workplace incidents, there are a growing number of newer threats brought about by the emergence of social media, AI mishaps and cybercrime.

However, having a strong crisis planning framework in place can help management teams (and their communications advisors) prepare for and mitigate these threats. Here’s some tips for ensuring you’re in the best position to respond effectively to a crisis.

Update your crisis plans

It’s easy to forget about the crisis plans you previously spent many hours devising. Step one is to review these and make sure they are easily accessible, preferably on a cloud-based platform to allow easy, real-time access across a number of different devices. Crisis plans need to consider a wide range of modern risks, including geopolitics, climate, cyber and tech.

Make cybersecurity resilience a key strand

Cyber incidents like ransomware attacks have emerged as one of the biggest operational, financial and reputational risks to businesses in recent years. Implementing a cyber incident response plan is vital for businesses of all sizes and this should include IT, legal, insurance and comms teams. It’s a good idea to run regular crisis response drills for cyber incidents.

Plan for multiple threats

Such is the connected nature of the modern world that crises rarely happen in isolation. For example, a cyber incident that leads to IT issues is likely to impact other areas like site security and access, supply chain management, data protection and so on. This makes it important to plan for multiple crises running at the same time with a scenario mapping exercise.

Bring the right expertise to the table

Responding effectively to a crisis has always needed the right people to be part of the team – and this need has only become more acute in modern times. Ensure the right specialists from across your organisation – and externally where needed – are part of the crisis response team. For example, this might include HR, law, IT, finance and comms, as well operational staff.

Ensure leaders are visible

Making sure leaders are visible during a crisis is key to reassuring staff, customers, supply chain partners and other stakeholders. Whether it’s media interviews, videos for social media or content for internal comms channels, it needs to come from the top. Ensure the CEO and other key members of the executive are media trained and prepared to be the calming face of a crisis.

Don’t overlook your staff in a crisis

Often when dealing with a crisis, communication with customers and external stakeholders is prioritised at the expense of keeping staff informed. Employee wellbeing and mental health risks should be considered as part of your crisis planning to ensure staff are supported and have clear direction.

Plan your crisis comms in advance

Use templates and pre-drafted statements to prepare your communications response to a range of scenarios. This will ensure communication on your own channels and your external media response can happen quickly, preventing other voices from filling the communications void. This communication needs to be clear, simple and human, whether it’s communicated in person or through written statements.

Stress-test your crisis plans regularly

Running regular drills for a range of crisis scenarios is the only way to test, evaluate and improve your response to a crisis. Look at what worked well and what needs to be improved and then update your plans accordingly.

Freshfield has been providing crisis communications support to organisations and their leaders for over 20 years. If you want to discuss a project, in confidence, contact our specialist and experienced team at hello@freshfield.com.