Internal Communication

Internal Communications during crisis management

Question:

In times of external crisis, like facing bankrupcy or a scam charge, should the management use internal communications to help employees understand what is going on, or should they just keep quiet and let them speculate?
If they should, how must the Internal Comms Team break the news to the employees in times like this?

Answer:

Hello Swagata, thanks for writing in and asking this very interesting question. No crisis is easy to manage and with the boundaries between internal and external communications blurring, there is no doubt that employees need to know first. The best way to break the news is by having your leader directly and transparently share the issue, how it happened and what the organization is doing to mitigate the concern. It can be face-to-face, email or video. You can't let employees speculate since that leads to more confusion or angst.

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