| Crisis communications management readiness questionnaire By Deon Binneman. 1. Does your organisation have a clearly defined crisis management plan in place? 2. Have you made a ‘worst case list’ recently of what could happen to your organisation? 3. Have you a written crisis management plan in place, up to date and circulated and accepted by all stakeholders? 4. Have you conducted a dry run of the preparedness of your crisis management plan? 5. How long will it take you to enact your plan, from the moment a crisis takes place? 6. Have you appointed spokespersons that will communicate with all stakeholders if a crisis should occur? 7. Have you arranged and got approval for CEO’s actions and statements in an emergency? 8. Have you assigned organisation spokesmen and alternatives on a 24–hour, 7–day duty (Until the crisis is over)? 9. Have you benchmarked your emergency procedures versus the rest of competitors in your industry? 10. Have you had your spokespersons trained in media interviews and other communication techniques? 11. Have you prepared alternate plans, with added specifications for each category? (The plan for an explosion is not the same as that of a wildcat strike or if an ill employee turns up for work and most employees refuse to work with him/her.) 12. Have you legally complied with all the necessary legislation that can impact on the organisation in time of crisis? 13. Have you clearly defined and identified the circumstances that deserve the label of disaster, emergency or catastrophe? 14. Have you assigned crisis designation decisions to a specific person or group of persons? 15. Have these people received specific and adequate training so that they will know what to do? 16. Have you created a policy manual, a how-to-manual on developing and implementing a crisis communications plan and circulated it to all concerned, and have they verified their understanding of the contents? 17. Have you determined the competencies needed to communicate effectively in a crisis e.g. public speaking, meeting skills, press conference question handling, writing skills and planning strategies? Scoring: Author: Deon Binneman, phone/fax +27 011 4753515, mobile: 083 4254318 Speaker, Trainer & Consultant, REPUCOMM, Johannesburg, South Africa deonbin@icon.co.za
•Date: 7th July 2005 •Region: Africa/World •Type:
Article •Topic: Crisis communications |
