Crisis Communication: Protect Reputation and Trust

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Companies do not go quiet in a crisis because they have nothing to say. They go quiet because nobody decided in advance who speaks.

By the time you agree the wording, the story is already written

Somebody is drafting a statement, somebody else is checking it with legal, and while that happens the version of events settles without you. From then on you are not explaining what happened — you are contradicting an account that already exists, which is a completely different and much harder job. The second failure runs in parallel: something goes out externally and nothing goes out internally, so your own employees find out from the news. Within a week the most quoted commentary on your company comes from the people who work there, and none of it was coordinated with anyone.

What this course covers

Forty-two lessons along both lines at once, external and internal. The frame first: how the function moved from issuing press releases to managing trust, where it belongs in the structure and what the chief executive expects, reputation treated as an intangible asset, key narratives and messaging, the channel mix, the executive as a public figure and the risk that comes with it, the types of crisis, the response team, the principles crisis communication runs on, working with media, social platforms and employees simultaneously, the mistakes companies repeat, and measurement past reach — output, outcome and impact, reputation indices, and defending the budget. Then naming the risk before it arrives: the heat map, the fraud and safety triangles, cognitive bias and conflict of interest, incidents at individual and company level, ISO 31000, the risk hierarchy, escalation, warning signs in a senior team, the three lines of defence, the high-reliability organisation, and personal accountability. Then the internal reality: what a crisis does to every process, hiring into visible problems, reducing payroll in the least damaging order, assessing people quickly, choosing who goes, delivering the news, anonymous feedback, and the contingency plan. Then telling your own people properly: the communications audit, setting a goal that changes behaviour, segmenting employees and building personas, the message template, channels and managers as a channel, communicating bad news, and measuring whether any of it landed. Then conflict, because not every crisis is an event: escalation patterns, the resolution algorithm, office politics, assessing likelihood with a test, negotiation and mediation. Finally rebuilding: audience research, the strategic audit, indicators and a dashboard, the communication plan, the social media audit, ambassadors, and production.

Three blocks recorded for an internal audience

The crisis, internal communications and reputation blocks were recorded for the people function — redundancies, letters to employees, employer reputation. That is not adjacent material, it is the other half of the subject. You speak outward and inward on the same day, and the gap between the two versions is the fastest way to turn an event into a scandal, because an employee reading in the press what nobody told them becomes a source for the journalist writing the next piece. The risk block reaches wider than communication and brings ISO 31000 and the three lines of defence, which is deliberate: crisis communication cannot be improvised, and the list of what might happen is written long before anything does.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 42 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: the messaging framework, the crisis response team structure, the crisis communication principles, the risk heat map, ISO 31000, the three lines of defence, the decision checklist, the contingency plan, employee segmentation and the message template, the escalation algorithm, and the reputation dashboard

• Both directions taught together, external and internal, rather than one of them

Where to start

Write down who is authorised to speak for your organisation if something happens tonight. If the answer takes more than a sentence, that is the first thing this course fixes. Enrol now and start today.