Preparation in the Upcoming Crisis (Research Paper Sample)

Pre-Crisis Preparation
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Institutional Affiliation
Pre-Crisis Preparation
Organizations are bound to experience crises in the course of their operations. The responses to such happenings determine whether a company will maintain its reputation or suffer due to negative publicity that usually accompanies crises. Communication is crucial before, during, and after a disruption occurs, and this makes a Chief Communication Officer (CCO) a significant player in any firm (Coombs, 2007). Since no one can tell the exact time that disaster will strike, businesses ought to prepare themselves for such a scenario by developing a pre-crisis plan. It increases the chance of a company to get on its feet after undergoing a disruption. This paper summarizes the pre-crisis preparation part of the crisis communication process.
Pre-crisis Preparation involves communication collaboration among the different departments in an organization to develop a fruitful response to a possible crisis. The CCO coordinates the said communication by assigning different roles to particular departments. It is worth noting that some people in an organization may be skeptical about the need for preparations and the CCO should try to show the importance of a plan. If he or she cannot manage to convince the other people alone, it is imperative that he or she engages an external analyst who will explain to the members the importance of the plan. The best blueprint for CCOs to follow contains a seven-point communication strategy that includes:
Preparation of a Dark Website
A website is an essential part of a business because many customers check it while trying to understand what a firm offers. In case of a crisis, many people will go online to review the information about the company on its page and to see what it is doing to deal with the occurrences. However, some disasters, like hacking, may compromise the company’s page, making it hard for the customers and the other stakeholders to access any information about the organization. A dark website comes in handy at such times because the company will make it available to the world in place of the compromised one. Before a disaster strikes, it is only opened if the company intends to update the information on it, or when the CCO wants to check its effectiveness.