The business climate of mergers and acquisitions, the impact of the Internet and the advent of the global market have all given way to an increased need for the internal communications audit - the checks-and-balances you rely on to measure employee morale, customer concerns, media coverage, impressions of financial health, and alignment of messages.
But the communications audit - which for many companies is an annual undertaking - takes on a very different face in the midst of a crisis. That's when the think-tank approach is abandoned for the art of one-on-one, and the audit becomes crucial. PR should help spearhead this process, but employees and managers from all operational levels need to be involved.
"You need to determine what's rumor and what's a valid concern," says Bob Irvine, president of the Institute for Crisis Management, Louisville, Ky. "Chaos creates a lot of misinformation and people have the tendency to overreact or under-react - the Clinton situation is an ideal example of under-reaction."
Although comparing what's unfolding at the White House with what you face on a daily basis is, in many ways, apples and oranges, there are some PR lessons the Clinton/Lewinsky soap opera accentuates: the need for formal policies (it should be in writing who key spokespeople are and what crisis scenarios they'll head), and the need to diagram - and for employees to be cognizant of - your information network.
Many companies in the midst of crises forget to rely on some very simple techniques, like establishing a tollfree hotline through which stakeholders can leave anonymous messages. These are ideal routes to discover what concerns, controversies and stumbling blocks exist within (or even outside) the organization.
Once you've completed the information-gathering stage, you should focus on the message-crafting phase. And that information shouldn't be passed on in some formal memo that's mass-distributed to everyone. "Your method might be a plant manager talking to everyone on the P.A. system or on voicemail," Irvine says. "You don't want to send in the big guns from L.A. to do the job. Let the guy in charge [at the facility] do it, so you don't undermine his authority."
"And you can't rely on [stakeholder and employee] surveys (one of the tools used during the annual audit process) during this time," points out Kelly McCarthy Class, senior VP and director at the integrated communications shop The Wolf Group, Cleveland. "What you're trying to find out, for example, is what managers are saying versus what the line people are saying."
Once you have held one-on-one conversation with stakeholders and communicated what's transpiring, your job is far from complete. When you are no longer in "crisis mode," what should unfold is a far more intensive analysis of your information network. That should include critiquing everything from your in-house newsletter to what complaints your customer relations reps are handling to what messages are delivered in your annual report.
Below is a rundown of the list of issues/business strategies and materials/revenue generators and business goals you'll have to dissect during a long-term audit.
| INTERNAL AUDIT BLUEPRINT | |
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INDUSTRY/ COMPANY AREA OF INQUIRY |
SUBJECTS TO CONSIDER |
| Competition |
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| General Information |
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| Company Products |
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| Crises/Issues |
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| Customers |
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| Sales and Marketing |
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| Marketing Communications |
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| (Institute for Crisis Management, 502/584-0402; The Wolf Group, 216/479-2346) | |