Communications Leadership: Crisis Communications Plan

Problem: Within the first two weeks in my role as Director of Strategic Communications, Water For People faced two separate communication crisis in two different country programs. While the organization did have a crisis response plan, there were no accompanying communication guidelines so leadership, HR and internal comms teams had guidelines to follow in intense, urgent situations.

Solution: I developed Water For People’s first Crisis Communication Playbook (CCP), which created a structure for empathetically and responsively communicating with internal and external audiences when a crisis impacting our organizational reputation or business function occurred. 

The playbook outlined the processes, potential scenarios and approaches to take to equip Water For People leadership and employees to communicate with empathy, appropriate transparency and timeliness. The CCP is used alongside the Organizational Crisis Response Protocol.