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A day doesn’t go by where you don’t hear about companies laying employees off due to the recent economic crisis. While it’s never easy to cut employees, maintaining an effective communications plan during these times is vital to your company maintaining a positive image.
A few areas that need to be addressed immediately:
1) Be open and honest. Don’t hide information. Even if you don’t have all the information available, report what you do know and inform your audience that once the rest of the information will be made available when it arrives.
2) Don’t forget your employees. Managing internal communication is one of the most important areas you need to address. Not addressing your employees opens the door for incorrect, and possibly damaging, information out to the public. Also ensuring a high level of employee moral is going to make getting through the crisis a lot easier.
3) Know when to talk and when to be quiet. Treat each crisis/hardship individually and as they come. Opening your mouth and talking about a crisis has the potential to make the situation a lot worse than it should be. Don’t hide information, but don’t go rushing to every media outlet.
Have any of you been in the unfortunate situation of having to lay employees off, or been through a layoff? How did you/they communicate the process? Things you think they could have done better?
