Stop Mischaracterising Crises: Reputations are at Stake!
The increasing prevalence of reputational harm and declining trust highlights a critical issue in the public relations field today.
There is a growing mischaracterization of emergencies, crises, incidents, and issues.
The media puts many of them into the ‘crisis’ basket, which is very misleading for the public and is having an adverse effect on stakeholder and public perception and, in turn, reputations.
Reputations are developed over time; perceptions are instantaneous, thus highlighting how reputations can be destroyed in minutes, especially in today’s fast-moving digital world.
The critical need is for business leaders, their public relations practitioners and their risk managers, along with the Crisis Management Teams (CMT) to have a clear understanding of how they are classifying and handling the ‘crisis landscape’.
Misunderstandings in categorization has contributed to the significant growth in the lack of trust in the corporate and political sectors (including leadership), along with declining stakeholder confidence and credibility.[1]
If public relations practitioners are the ‘keepers’ of reputation management, understanding how perceptions shape reputations is now critical to each classification. The manifestation of this often is poorly developed communication plans, strategies and tactics.
As Jaques (2014) notes, operational actions and management decision-making (e.g., at the Crisis Management Team (CMT) level and even Board level) are critical to the communication process and reputation management.
By definition and distinction
- Emergency Management: Addresses life-threatening situations, such as natural disasters (bushfires, floods, cyclones), focusing on immediate safety. These are managed within the frameworks of Australia’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), which comes under the Australian Government Crisis Management Framework (AGCMF)
- Crisis Management: Safeguards organisational stability and reputation in response to specific threats, requiring strategic communication.
- Incident Management: Handles routine issues that, if ignored, could escalate into crises affecting public perception.
- Issue Management: Proactively addresses ongoing concerns to prevent escalation into crises.
- Event Management: Manages planned initiatives that influence public perception based on execution.
Each of these is key to an organisation’s, or a person’s reputation, ultimately influencing profitability, sustainability, and credibility, let alone the trust factor.
Mischaracterizing any of them leads to distortions of perceptions of the response and mitigation processes, as well as with the misalignment of an organisation’s core values, especially when seeking to maintain or restore trust and confidence.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (2005) aptly described it as the "risk of risks."
A good starting point to address this issue is the slogan: Be Alert, Not Alarmed. It was used in the 2003 ‘war on terror’ campaign by the Australian government.
[1] OECD Trust in Government; APSReform; Gallup; Edelman Trust Barometer