Put Out a Consistent Message

When breaking the news of a disruption, some phone calls are inevitably harder than others. You may be straight on the phone to your insurance company or loss adjustors, but you may not be quite so keen to break the news to the businesses to which you’re due to deliver later that day.

But with external communications everyone must be on the same page. Suppliers, stakeholders and other local businesses will lose faith in you if you give out mixed messages or alert some suppliers to the disruption without telling others – especially if they’re likely to discuss the situation among themselves.

In order to get a consistent message out there, make sure you brief your staff and define what they should (and shouldn’t) say outside of the workplace. Bring some discipline to the operation by going through responses to predictable questions, and ask staff to refer difficult queries to you so you can control what is and isn’t said. And make sure you remind off-duty employees to think before talking to their friends in the pub or on the bus home.