Crisis Communications Xavier University Style

What were your observations during the crisis as far as communications where concerned at the following levels: What were your observations during the crisis as far as communications where concerned at the following levels:  Individual (person to person); group to group, organization (the library family), the university as a community?  What is the communications role of leadership in a crisis?  What were the lessons learned?  Should a library have a crisis communications plan?  What core elements do you think should be included in such a plan?

Individual Communications

Telephone  Initially poor to non-existant  No individual had comprehensive staff contact info  Some staff didn’t have cell phones

 Initially non-existent  With University Technology Infrastructure taken down prior to storm, all university e- mail accounts disappeared.  Most faculty and staff quickly got Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail accounts, but contact between colleagues only followed phone contact.

Group Communications  Improved rapidly once individual contacts were made.  Although no one individual had contact information for the entire organization, each was in contact with two or more co-workers.  Associate and Assistant Directors all made it to stable locations with landlines, greatly facilitating contact between the Director and other staff members.  By mid-October, the Director had been in touch with all but a handful of faculty and staff.  A few faculty and staff made little to no effort to contact supervisors or the Director. Their whereabouts remained a mystery until early 2006

Organizational Communication  Organizational communication proved to be sporadic.  Hard news from University Administration was limited, inhibiting the Director’s ability to keep library faculty and staff aware of progress.

University as Community What happened:  An Emergency university web site, established earlier in the year went live almost immediately. It accomplished the following:  It provided a link to a directory of faculty and administrative temporary addresses.  It served as the platform for irregular bulletins that described some recovery efforts.  It offered assurance that the university would reopen in January of What didn’t:  Provide a listing of contact information for staff personnel.  Offer regular updates. Sometimes weeks went by with no new information posted about the university or its future plans, particularly regarding the employment status of faculty and staff.  Provide easy access to senior university officials.  Offer detailed information on the condition of the campus or specific clarification of news that came through the major television networks.

What is the communications role of leadership in a crisis?  A free flow of communications is a hallmark of good organizational management.  A constant flow of information helps maintain morale.  Good information given in a timely fashion enables organizational members to think clearly and contribute ideas toward the moderation of the crisis.

Maybe Leadership Should Integrate: The Marine Corps Leadership Principles

Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates. Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates. Operate through the Chain of command.

Know your people and look out for their welfare.  Put your people’s welfare ahead of your own.  See the members of your unit and let them see you so that they may all know you and feel you know them. Be approachable.  Determine what your unit’s mental attitude is; keep in touch with their thoughts.

Make sound and timely decisions  Consider the advice and suggestions of your subordinates whenever possible before making decisions.  Announce decisions in time to allow subordinates to make necessary plans.  Make sure your people are familiar with your policies and plans.  Consider the effects of your decisions on all members of your group.

Keep your people informed.  Whenever possible, explain why tasks must be done and how you intend to do them.  Assure yourself that immediate subordinates are passing along necessary information.  Be alert to the spread of rumors. Stop rumors by replacing them with the truth.  Build morale by publicizing information concerning the successes of your unit.  Keep your unit informed about factors affecting their pay and benefits.

Build Teamwork Use the voice of all to develop a plan, sometimes it’s the persons in the trenches that have great ideas.

What were the lessons learned?  Cell phone numbers and emergency accounts should be established by all key faculty and staff prior to emergencies.  All supervisors should have emergency contact information for their immediate subordinates.  Library leadership should set a tentative time to establish multi- party contact to share information and discuss possible post-emergency responses.  Don’t wait for upper-level university administration to contact Library leadership. Be pro-active, have concrete suggestions and recommendations.  Library leadership should contact each other regularly whether there is new information to share or not, and staff should be kept aware of what is known and not known. Saying nothing only damages morale.

Should a library have a crisis communications plan? Absolutely !

What core elements do you think should be included in such a plan?  Have a written plan of action that addresses problems and responses to fire, flood, and wind catastrophe, including the names of consultants and companies experienced in addressing such catastrophes.  All key personnel should have primary contact information for subordinates.  In addition to primary contact info, key personnel should also have contact information for close relatives of staff in case primary methods of communication fail.

What have we done!  Everyone Library worker completed: Library Resource Center Emergency Contact Information Library Resource Center Emergency Contact Information  Developing a Remote user-group via Yahoo or Google  Each Library worker will have contact information on each other