Internal Messaging is critical in keeping your staff informed


During any crisis, the PIO team is always involved in the planning and operations of the agency. PIO’s have been trained to recognize the situation, look at all angles, and then create a plan of action with the proper messaging.

While planning our strategies for the external stakeholder, it’s sometimes a common mistake to forget one core audience that can make or break any crisis communications plan: employees. Internal messaging has two key factors to remember.

First, keeping the employees informed will calm fears, address issues and provide enlightenment. I will go into more detail on why this is important later. The second key factor is, providing information to the employees on planning will keep them on the script. If an employee isn’t properly informed, they could accidentally deaminate information that is inaccurate further clouding the crisis at hand.

Now let’s return why it is important to provide information upfront to keep employees informed on issues. Let’s use the current pandemic as an example. Planning for agency staff shortages is always a concern for executive leadership. In a normal circumstance, agencies can rely upon mutual aid agreements to backfill temporary shortages. However, what happens when the other agencies are unable to provide that temporary backfill due to their own operational needs?

This is where internal messaging becomes important. Staff members may become increasingly upset when scheduling is modified to keep some staff in reserve, or leadership has been given alternate schedules. All too frequently, due to the paramilitary structure of most agencies, the thought is that the line employees do not need to know. But this should be the exact opposite in a crisis, such as the current pandemic. Keeping employees properly informed on why certain continuity of operations plans are in place will dispel those fears.

As the PIO, your job in the leadership structure should be raising that issue at your crisis planning meetings and then preparing messaging throughout the implementation of the plans to send out internally to provide clarity to your staff.  This helps to reduce strain and emotional fatigue on staff as the crisis unfolds and continues over a prolonged period.

As you approach your next big crisis communications plan, here are a few things to consider keeping company employees and agency teams aligned, on message and part of the overarching strategy.

1. Provide messaging early and often.

With dozens of messages flying around during times of crisis, your internal messaging must be   You should be preparing a crisis-messaging plan, be sure to share it with staff.

To take it a step further (which, in crisis, you always should), remind line supervisors and executive leadership to routinely check in with staff. In this current pandemic, person to person meetings or attending roll calls may not be the most prudent. But, sending out shift level text messages or emails targeting specific shifts routinely will provide staff with that level of reassurance that leadership supports them and knows they are doing a great job.

2. Designate a single Point of Contact

To keep the lines of internal communication simple and efficient, designate one or two people to serve as the “go-to” for any press inquiries or red flags.

In any crisis, you want to be one step ahead of the news cycle — and your employees are the organization's eyes and ears to help you do just that. Make sure your teams are informed and complimented for coming to you with any potential issues.

3. Be open and available for questions and concerns.

Your crisis point person also should be ready and willing to answer any employee questions or concerns about the crisis. For example, the Chicago Police Department recently had several officers involved with the arrest of a person who had COVID-19. The department failed to notify the officers of the exposure. Several of those officers are now sick. The concern was a legal question, could the
department provide that information to the officers, which might violate the victim’s privacy and HIPPA rights. However, in this situation, those that are involved with this person have a right to know, just as if an officer was exposed to a person who had HIV, or Hepatitis C.

These types of issues can be readily avoided if you have already planned and prepared a template to address the issue.  If employees feel out of the loop or unheard, they’re less likely to follow protocol and may cause further unrest for the organization.

4. Provide blunt but necessary reminders

Your employees may think chatting about the crisis over drinks is harmless, but what if a reporter or company stakeholder is next to you? In the current COVID-19 crisis, social media will be the biggest concern from an internal release of information. This is the time to remind employees about information security on their social media accounts. The news media trolls personal police officer’s social media accounts all the time.  Plan to remind those officers of this regularly.

5. Offer crisis support for interested employees.

Unfortunately, employees will be stressed, experiencing anxiety, confusion, and fear, when faced with an unknown such as COVID-19. Therefore, prepare internal messaging reminding employees about your Employee Assistance Program and outreach efforts that they may turn to for assistance. This internal messaging should include resources such as stress reduction tips and self-help aids.

By providing internal messaging to your staff, your the organization will be better informed, reduce miss-information and improve morale, as well as reduce staff stress.

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