Protecting Employees from Outside Threats — A lesson in internal communications
When a crisis hits, how do you handle it?
This is a question that companies have grappled with, successfully or not, for a long time. Today’s threat landscape is more perilous than ever. Modern business leaders have to deal with cyberattacks that could threaten employees' privacy as well as their physical safety. Let’s take a look at a real-world example for how we can handle a modern day crisis.
The most dangerous situation can come in the form of a physical threat.
We start our story with perhaps the scariest threat — a physical one. A public threat was made against the President of the Organization while she was traveling with staff abroad. As is often the case, this threat was just the tip of the iceberg. Additional threats were made against her on social media. Subsequently, the organization's website was hacked and knocked offline. This prompted additional concerns for future security risks. The threats were very real and coming from seemingly every angle.
So what was our solution?
The first thing we benefited from was something we did before any threats were made: preparation. A security point of contact was assigned prior to the trip. We made sure that all contact information was available. We also made sure that all appropriate personnel, including the president, has the proper technology for the trip, including a cellphone.
Now, we needed to take action. HQ staff acted as the lead to coordinate with the President and her accompanying team. We also coordinated with additional offices such as law enforcement, diplomats, and cybersecurity consultants. Almost immediately after the event, additional security was provided to protect against any physical attacks. Threats on social media were reported and the comments feature was temporarily suspended. This helps to isolate the incident so you can focus on the problem at hand. Finally, the server provider was able to provide IP addresses for the origin of the cyber attack.
Then, we took extreme measures to try and focus the narrative. We didn’t use our landlines and we didn’t use our email until our IT support gave us approval.
With any crisis event comes some measure of failure. Blindspots in the response can act as lessons on what to avoid in the future. In this situation, the threat made against the President was already public. Our team should have contacted the family first. In a crisis it is important to remember the human side of your response. Your clients or employees have families that need to be contacted before anything else.
When a crisis strikes, how you communicate can determine whether your business loses credibility or builds trust.
Effective crisis communication is a critical piece in any business, big or small. Cate Urban Communications can help navigate through crises using decades of experience and client testimonials to prove it.
Learn what Cate Urban Communications can do for your company:
Internal communications play a critical role in supporting external marketing and messaging goals by ensuring that everyone within an organization is informed, aligned, and empowered to represent the brand consistently. When staff and stakeholders clearly understand the organization’s mission, values, and priorities, they become stronger advocates and deliver a more unified message to the outside world. Effective internal communication fosters collaboration, boosts morale, and helps maintain consistency across departments, which translates into more cohesive, credible, and impactful external campaigns and public engagement.
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