Five key points for successful internal crisis management

When CEO Vishal Garg of online mortgage lender Better.com made 900 staff redundant on a Zoom call, his casual lack of respect for his employees made headline news when one attendee posted a recording on social media. The move sparked internal turmoil in the company and highlighted a work stream that PRs are increasingly having to factor into their roles – that of crisis management for internal comms.

Whether it’s a poorly handled message delivery by a leader, an internal failure such as a data leak or a social media revelation around behaviour or culture by disgruntled employees, all have the potential to cause huge problems for a business, both with employees and stakeholders. But also, depending on how compelling the issue is, with a wider audience, including consumers and shareholders. At the most high-profile end of the spectrum, whistleblowing where wrongdoing disclosed is in the public interest, is an often complex situation with legal implications, and protections currently the subject of an upcoming Government review.

But while machinations, malfeasance and tense relationships within businesses are nothing new, the accelerating digital ability of these internal dynamics to derail companies, influence wider perception and create havoc has pushed this work to the fore.

Forcing change

Social media and forums such as Glassdoor are some of the most high-profile and immediate ways in which problems within a business can become amplified to other employees and the wider world.

Of course, not everything on social media sparks a crisis; one junior employee putting out a tweet complaining about management is not usually going to go far. But PRs have to be vigilant and realistic now about the potential of these platforms to ignite loud and often public conversations. So why are staff turning to social media more now to get their leaders to take action? 

“One factor is the workplace environment post-COVID and differing expectations of what work looks like,” says Emma Duke, chartered PR consultant and crisis management expert. “People are now asking, ‘hang on a minute, how does work ‘work’ for me? There is also something around employees feeling more empowered to have a voice externally now when talking about their organisation. They’ve seen where others have drawn attention to things going on internally and thought, ‘Hey, I can also play a role here. I’m going to say something.’”

For an increasing amount of employees, social media platforms can be a powerful last-ditch way to force change—witness the desperate play by Goldman Sachs analysts who posted photos and information on social media detailing their burnout and highlighted a culture of extreme overwork. “In the end, it comes down to giving yourself the power to start that conversation in a different place,” notes Duke. “Employees having those discussions internally are not feeling heard so they resort to going external to give themselves a bit more positional power in the discussion.”

Leading from the front

How a business responds to an internal crisis, and even how prone it is to it in the first place, very much comes down to the leadership and the culture, insists Duke. “If you’ve got an organisation and a leader willing to be open about their failures and to listen the trust is going to be stronger—and you also don’t have to do as much work connecting leaders to employees, which can be challenging.

“There are organisations out there, however, who have toxic cultures. And one of the biggest problems with that is that people are worried about raising their hand and flagging where something’s wrong. As such, you get crisis happening more easily.”

Dealing with an internal crisis, comms needs to focus on a number of levels; addressing and containing it, but also acting as a voice between employees and leadership and sometimes trying to use the incident to catalyse wider positive change in an organisation itself. In the case of the Goldman Sachs incident, externalising led to a high-profile review of its working practices and cultural change that included protected weekends as a direct result.

Values are also crucial to crisis management, says Duke. “If the leadership isn’t living the brand values it can go horribly wrong. And if you want to be able to respond to any kind of crisis internally or externally now you need to know what your values are as an organisation, because otherwise you are lost.”

One key value to leveraging success is a willingness to be transparent and honest, and to listen. Duke notes the recent BBC-Lineker situation as a prime example. “You don’t have to have a perfect reputation when you deal with an employee-led crisis, but you do need to be able to talk with authenticity. In the case of the BBC, it was unable to do this, thanks to the inconsistencies it reflected at a leadership level, at the time.”
 

An opportunity

For Duke, turning internal crisis into an opportunity for change often means needing to have a deeply awkward set of meetings’ where you say, ‘you don’t like it, but they’re right and now you’re going to have to face up to this’. “A lot of people don’t like to lean into that though. Often organisations at that point will just freeze up and say, No, shut the doors.”

Ultimately how you address the issue will determine what happens next. While an internal comms team cannot ultimately make executive decisions they can be a powerful lever for effecting positive change—ultimately leaving an organisation stronger than before. 

In responding to internal crisis with the kind of proactive communication that employees look for, and that cultural discord or an executive mis-step requires; to mitigate its effects, move forward and help regain trust, the strategic work of a PR team here becomes not just about fighting fires but about building real business resilience—and ultimately success.
 

Five key points for successful internal crisis management

Be ready to challenge

Your crisis team will likely include the internal comms team, HR and the leadership team, says Duke. “You’ll want to understand what the core of the issue is and so there will be some tricky conversations around what’s happening and what created this situation. You need to be ready to challenge leaders to be ready to acknowledge it publicly: “We’ve heard something here, we’re looking into it”. You can then use the time that gives you to drill down to what’s really going on: is it limited to that part of the business? And are there legal implications? “It’s our job to listen and empathise with employees to be able to put that voice to leadership. And equally, we become the voice of leadership, so this is actually one of the most challenging situations for a comms team,” notes Duke.

Communicate where it will be heard

“It’s PR 101 that it doesn’t matter what you’re saying if no one’s reading it—and often that’s the intranet” says Duke. Email, Yammer, Facebook, employee forums or videoconferencing may be more effective channels, but the other important one is people. “If leaders aren’t talking directly to people, you’re not going to be able to fix the situation.” The tone you strike in your response depends on the issue, but having honesty and continuity, rather than a ‘crisis personality’ makes it easier to know how to respond, because you’ve already set the tone with your employees.

Keep social media consistent

“If multiple employees are talking externally and that kicks off a proper crisis, you may need software to track what’s going on. I’ve found this useful in various situations, because I could adapt the message depending on where an element of the issue was really contentious,” says Duke. “Social media can go very dark very quickly and listening to that all the time is a terrifying position to put an employee in. Your statement should have a social media equivalent, so it’s about working with your social channel managers to keep that consistent message, not necessarily replying, one-on-one, because that can spiral.”

Consider the legal implications

“I’ve always been lucky enough to work closely enough to a legal team to be able to talk to them quickly, but it’s always good to learn more about the law as a PR person,” notes Duke. “One of the issues between comms and legal is the idea that if you say sorry, suddenly you’re liable. I ran an event on this, and it turns out it’s nonsense. In the end, though, it comes down to the relationship you’ve got with the legal team to navigate to a place of comfort on both parts.”

Take a longer-term view

“The longer-term crisis response is where you as a comms team sit down with leadership and ask, how do we stop this ever happening again? And what do we need to do in order to re-establish trust with employees?” says Duke. “Realistically, you need a facilitator within that executive team to understand what the anxieties are, what the barriers are to that authentic conversation with employees and making sure that issues are raised, challenges heard and failures openly talked about. Ultimately, you need to fix leaders if you want to fix cultures.”