Why we need to make internal communication a strategic crisis priority

As the risks faced by all organisations become increasingly complex, we see a growing recognition of the importance of internal crisis communication, and a move to better build it into the plan. Despite this, strategic understanding of the subject is still developing, and time after time when crisis strikes, too many companies still look externally first – thinking of targeted and meaningful communication with the people they’ll rely on to confront the challenge as a lesser concern.

Times are slowly changing, but most crisis plans still fail to consider internal communication as a strategic priority. 

Manuals and playbooks may nod to internal channels, but they fail to consider specific internal objectives, approaches or impacts and they fail to anticipate the full range of employee needs or consider how these needs differ and change as the crisis evolves. The result is that in far too many companies, internal crisis communication is still pieced together using external briefing notes and repurposed press releases that offer no personalisation for employees and no space for questions or conversations. And the problem with that is that it’s not only leading with an outdated style of corporate communication but it’s disempowering the crisis response from the inside out.

When a crisis strikes, your company’s employees will experience the situation differently and more directly than many of its other stakeholders. Their personal and professional roles, relationships and experiences in the organisation means they have different crisis communication needs that must be understood and catered for. And whether they become crisis victims, defenders, champions or witnesses, they will all be high-power high-interest stakeholders and reputation carriers who can shape both the crisis narrative and the crisis response. What they think, feel and do matters, and company leaders need to recognise that they have a duty not just to keep employees and contractors safe, but also to keep them supported, empowered and enabled all the way through the most challenging times they may ever face.

Poorly informed communication strategies inside the organisation don’t just fail to minimise harm, they can worsen it by creating heightened trauma, low morale, misunderstanding and an inability to confront the challenge. Leaders must recognise that if they lose the people inside the organisation, they lose everyone else, and an inability to connect with people and help them make sense of what is happening not only hampers crisis recovery, it also leads to further operational, reputational and financial damage.

The good news is that for all the organisations who worsen the crisis because they fail to understand and meet basic employee needs, there are others who use internal communication and relationships to build back stronger. Those that succeed embrace tailored internal communication as a strategic crisis priority, they commit to creating a physically and psychologically safe work environment well before crisis ever strikes, and they prioritise meaningful two-way communication inside the organisation as a proactive strategy through good times and bad.

Importantly they know not to apply cut-and-paste crisis messages and channels just because they have seen them work somewhere else for someone else, and they use a deep and rounded understanding not just of the difficulty they face, but of how that difficulty is experienced physically and psychologically inside the organisation to shape a bespoke communication strategy and cater to a full range of human and organisational internal crisis communications needs.

In my new book Internal Communication in Times of Crisis: How to secure employee trust, support and advocacy in crisis situations, I encourage crisis communication professionals and business leaders to take a more forward-looking approach to meeting different emotional, psychological and practical requirements in different circumstances. I offer strategic and practical advice as to how we can use different internal crisis communication approaches to overcome that initial sense of disruption, disorientation, shock and uncertainty; and I discuss how we must meet different human and organisational needs at different points as the crisis continues and eventually ends. This helps us use internal crisis communication to:

• Keep everyone physically and psychologically safe
• Help employees cope and function in the evolving situation
• And help employees to advocate for the organisation and support it as it recovers and rebuilds through the crisis challenge

A critical tip is to anticipate how different scenarios will affect the internal community not just at the moment of impact, but through the bumpy road back to business as usual or a new normal. To help with this, I introduce a new framework, the 7S of internal crisis communication, that encourages internal crisis communication professionals to begin with a focus on the basic human needs of survival, support and sensemaking then expand their activity to meet the organisational needs of stabilising, stimulating, sustaining and strengthening as the crisis evolves.

As the crisis landscape changes, our thinking about crisis communication needs to change too. The only way to fully protect and strengthen our organisations in the turbulent times we all face is to develop our understanding of when, how and importantly why we have to communicate with internal stakeholders in times of crisis, and to help company leaders recognise that internal crisis communication must be an ongoing two-way process that is shaped not just by what the company says in times of crisis, but what it does, what it represents, and what – and who – it is seen to value.

Alison Arnot is a consultant, trainer, speaker and author specialising in PR, internal communication and crisis communication. Her book, Internal Communication in Times of Crisis: How to secure employee trust, support and advocacy in crisis situations will be released on 3 July 2025 and it is available for pre-order now.

CIPR members and friends can use the code CIPR25 to save 25% on Alison’s book when buying it direct from the Kogan Page website.

Alison’s blog was originally published by the CIPR Crisis Communications Network.