Are You Ready for An Emergency?
How To Create A Successful Crisis Communications Plan

By Marc Ladin

When an emergency situation arises in a business setting, a well-prepared company does not panic. In most situations, from natural disasters to man-made acts, employees will look to management for direction. This direction must be conveyed in a clear, efficient and easily understood manner.

Most often, an emergency will arise with little or no notice – making advanced preparation crucial. Companies that prepare in advance for any situation are able to respond in a quick and decisive manner. They are able to communicate a clear message for everyone involved – including employees, customers, partners and even family members.

When building a crisis communication plan, consider the following questions:

• To whom do you need to communicate if a crisis occurs?
• Will they comprehend the message and its intended consequences?
• What communication methods will you use to reach your audiences?
• Are you confident that the message will be delivered, and can you confirm receipt?
• What equipment is required to have complete “two-way” communication with employees and other key audiences?
• What are the costs of NOT having a comprehensive communication system?

During a crisis, it is imperative that misunderstandings from verbal and nonverbal communication are minimized. Mangers must verify that messages are understood and allow employees to clarify with questions. When crafting a message, keep in mind these factors:

• Messages should be clear and concise to ensure comprehension.
• Poor word choice can hinder employees from correctly understanding the message
• Too much or too little information packaged in a message can lead to further confusion.
• A message that is poorly organized or full of technical jargon will likely lead to communication failure.

How will you communicate?
There are a variety of technologies that can be used to communicate during a crisis, including phone (land line, mobile and satellite), fax, the Internet, e-mail, radio, PDA and pager. These technologies use voice and text communications (such as email, SMS and Instant Messenger) to reach the target audience. However, if an emergency causes a power outage, many of the “dependable” communication technologies may be disabled. Also, remember that during a widespread emergency, local communication infrastructures often fail. This leads to the loss of primary forms of communication. Consider which alternatives would be best in every circumstance and what your back-up technologies would be for each primary channel.

It is critically important to get urgent messages out quickly. In the past, “telephone calling trees” were put in place to help disseminate information to a large number of individuals. However, this approach is inefficient, prone to errors and has many other shortcomings when you need to reach large numbers of people in a quick and efficient manner.

New Technology
The introduction of automated notification, or mass notification systems was born to address these shortcomings. Automated systems are more accurate, more effective, faster and often much less expensive than manual communication. Automated notification systems were created to deliver a large volume of text, voice or data messages to large audiences in a short amount of time over a redundant group of contact paths.

Mass notification systems come in a variety of basic architectures and configurations and can be operated internally or by a vendor. As technology has evolved, so have the solutions for mass communication, creating three distinct generations of technological improvements.

• Generation I technology – on-premise “box” solutions
• Generation II technology – application service providers
• Generation III technology – Web-native SaaS(Software as a Service) hosted solution providers

As notification technology evolved, the speed, capabilities, scale and reliability of each successive generation improved exponentially.

An automated communication system should be evaluated for its inherent ability to help management communicate. Initiating or accelerating the information flow can be a formidable job if communication lines are down. Automated notification simplifies this activity by reducing the number of messages that must be initiated. An automated system allows the sender to issue a single message to an entire list of people, which could include employees, customers, media or management.

Effective Message Delivery
Organizations should be able to access and use a notification system through the Internet and by telephone – via any phone or computer, not ones specific to a location. The system should also be able to deliver messages from multiple senders. Managers should be able to delegate authority to several individuals to ensure the emergency plan will not fail if one person is incapacitated or unavailable.

Two critical issues that arise when sending out communication are “Will the messages arrive? and “If so, when?” To maximize the likelihood that messages will be delivered in a timely manner, an emergency notification system should:

• Send messages via as many contact paths as possible – phone, cell, fax, computer (e-mail and IM), pager, PDA – and in as many formats as possible (voice, text, SMS).
• Permit multiple contact paths for each person on the list and allow recipient members to prioritize the contact methods they list.
• Make multiple attempts to contact each person on the list and allow confirmation of receipt of the message.
• Be provided via a SaaS(Software as a Service) model so that the system can be accessed from anywhere, at any time.
• Be hosted by redundant systems that are set up in an Active-Active configuration. This allows the system to continue operating even if the emergency affects one of the datacenters or if the infrastructure surrounding one of the facilities collapses.

Selective Sending
Nearly as important as reaching all the critical audiences is sending messages only to those who need to receive them. Sending extraneous messages in times of emergency can have serious unintended consequences, including chaos and crowding at the disaster site, an influx of unwanted phone calls and even mass panic. To channel messages correctly, messaging tools should have the ability to target specific audiences. Relationships between list members must be identifiable as this allows communicators to make selections based on the relationships.

Communication needs to flow consistently in two directions during a crisis. Usually, just sending out messages isn’t enough; management must know who has been contacted successfully and, sometimes, what their responses are. An automated notification system is a great mechanism for receiving and reporting such responses. To facilitate two-way communication, the notification system should be able to receive an active response, such as a key-pad entry, to confirm that a message has been delivered successfully.

The notification system should also be able to survey or poll recipients. Reports of all message delivery attempts, confirmations and polling results should be easily available by Internet and fax. Summary reports can quickly communicate the overall picture, such as how many recipients have been reached and how many have yet to confirm. Detail reports can show where individual follow-up is needed.

Efficient Communication
Determining which automated notification service on the market is the best fit will require careful consideration to what features and functionality best answer how a company will communicate in a crisis. Advanced features, such as conference calling and geographic targeting are important to consider because they maximize communication options. Feature-rich systems are more likely to overcome common communication obstacles, like phone line jams or loss of Internet connectivity. Many automated systems offer message libraries where created messages can be stored, as well as the functionality to create crisis scenarios connecting specific prepared messages with the exact group they will be sent to when an incident occurs.

Ease-of-Use
An automated notification system should be easy-to-use and should not require extensive training. Just as crisis communicators should not spend hours making phone calls, they should not have to remember complicated command sequences or search for user manuals. Studies show that most individual’s intellect drops by an average of 4 grade levels during a crisis, so simplicity and ease of use is essential for an effective system.

Stress and anxiety during a crisis will make communication difficult, and an automated notification system should reduce the stress, not add to it. Ideally, all functional areas of management – operations, security, legal, communications, management and finance – will be able to utilize an automated system for their own unique communication requirements.

A quality mass notification system will greatly reduce time spent on communications and will free emergency personnel to deal with crisis mitigation, response and recovery work. It is vital to have open, quick and responsive communication throughout the emergency lifecycle. Being able to initiate a few messages and receive hundreds or thousands of responses formatted in a readable report just a few minutes later is an enormous resource. An automated notification system is an ideal way to fill the information void quickly, while carefully delivering the right message to the right audience.

About the Author
Marc Ladin is the vice president of global marketing for 3n (National Notification Network), the leading global provider of mass notification solutions. 3n works with global 2000 corporations, government agencies and municipalities, healthcare systems and educational institutions in more than 70 countries with the ability to communicate in more than 230 countries worldwide. 3n's ACT-SaaS^SM service uses Generation III technology to provide performance, reliability and scalability far superior to its competition. Marc can be reached by calling 1-818-230-9700 or by emailing him at marc.ladin@3nonline.com.