The phrase “Communication is key” might seem cliche, but when a crisis hits, coordinated communication is vital.
Oklahoma State University (OSU) has seen its fair share of tragedy, from a plane crash in 2001 involving the men’s basketball team to a car crashing into the crowd at OSU’s Homecoming parade in 2015; we are no strangers to responding to crises and tragedy on campus.
Article author and OSU Associate Director of Public Information Shannon Rigsby, along with OSU Digital Communications Manager Hayley Hagan, and OSU Captain of Emergency Services Dan Ray will present “Turning Your Comms Team Into a High Reliability Crisis Response Organization” at this summer’s Campus Safety Conference in Austin, Texas, July 21-23. For more information and to register, CLICK HERE.
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The university gained resilience and resolve from navigating these events as it started thinking proactively. OSU developed a team focused on quickly and reliably communicating information to keep the campus and our community safe.
Learning from those who endured catastrophes gave us the insight to dissect past actions and identify key elements that have strengthened our team.
From creating a robust depth chart — which allows for uninterrupted response no matter the time of day — to constant training focused on continuous improvement, OSU’s crisis communication team has transformed over the past years into a highly reliable and efficient team.
Crisis response can be learned and improved and, as a land-grant university, we know how important it is to share what we know with others. Outlined here are some of those key elements of our organization that we feel are the backbone of our crisis response.
Build a 24/7 Crisis Response Team
You can have an amazing communications and marketing team, but without a predefined crisis plan, efforts with good intentions can quickly become confusing. When people are unsure what to do, well-meaning efforts — like sending texts, making calls or reaching out to different leaders — can quickly cause confusion. Crisis response requires coordination.
At OSU, we recognized this challenge and took action.
We ensure our response is coordinated and centered on developing a formal depth chart. This document outlines key roles and ensures redundancy so that every role has multiple personnel ready to step in and perform. These roles were identified through discussions with those who experienced tragedy at OSU and conversations with our team and OSU’s emergency management department. An example of some key roles in the depth chart are social media management, documentation and messaging. For each organization, these areas might be slightly different, and it is a list that continues to grow and change as we learn, practice and respond more.
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Defining these early allows people to understand what is needed from them. It helps them feel comfortable and empowered to assist in crisis response without the team becoming a jumbled mess. And, because multiple people are assigned to a role, it does not matter if someone is on vacation or unavailable; there is always someone to fill in.
However, in a crisis, the response is only effective if activation is swift and organized. At OSU, our team is activated via group text message — sometimes Teams and Slack will not notify people outside office hours but text messages will go through — and then transitions to dedicated crisis channels in Slack or Teams for real-time updates. This ensures that every team member has access to the same information at the same time.
Those communication channels are fed directly from members of our team who work closely with the OSU police department and the emergency operations center (EOC). Anytime there is an activation of the communications team, there is someone — often multiple people — who are stationed in the EOC and are responsible for relaying information back to the communications team. This means our group is always up to date with reliable and timely information to help us coordinate our response and messaging.
The flow of information goes both ways though, because while they provide factual updates, we relay critical information back to campus police and the EOC to assist with their response, including insights from social media monitoring.
This symbiotic relationship means that OSU’s overall incident response, from police offcers’ boots on the ground physically responding to the messaging and monitoring done by our team, is synced and coordinated.
Our depth chart was tested recently with the wildfires that impacted Oklahoma in March of this year. Our team jumped into action quickly and, as the event progressed and the hours got longer, members could take breaks and have secondary members fill those roles. Our response and communication were constant and consistent, all because of a single document developed months before.
Harness Social Media to Drive Accurate and Timely Updates
At OSU, social media is one of the strongest tools we have for crisis communication. Because our social team works in and out of a crisis to build trust in their audiences, our community knows it can rely on social messaging to be informed. Social media is a double-edged sword in crises, though. While it provides a fast way to disseminate information, it also fuels misinformation and panic.
So, having a team ready to monitor and respond to social media is critical in your response.
Our social media team consistently monitors content every day using Sprout Social, but during a crisis, monitoring intensifies by searching real-time activity for emerging concerns, flagged keywords and public sentiment. The social team also manually monitors platforms like YikYak — a location-based, anonymous messaging app — where students often go to post concerns and ask questions.
At the same time, they provide timely updates through official channels, ensuring the public receives verified information. Social media is also about what we don’t say. The team maintains a channel to work with social media administrators across the OSU system to pause scheduled content immediately to prevent tone-deaf messaging.
Additionally, engaging with direct messages to redirect people to official information sources and make them feel heard helps to continuously build trust.
In today’s digital world, social media might just be one of the most critical tools to get right and contributes massively to the effectiveness of your organization’s messaging.
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Amid an emergency, the media is crucial in informing the public. However, without a coordinated approach, media relations can become disconcerting.
At OSU, we ensure unified messaging across all departments by directing all media requests to our safety website, where all official updates are posted. Whether it be social media, a website or another single source, you need to determine where you want to direct the public and media to go for updates ahead of time and routinely make that clear.
Depending on the situation, you could have a sudden rush of media requests via email, phone call or social media. It’s important to identify someone on the team ahead of time who will answer those requests by redirecting them to our primary source for updates and documenting who has reached out.
Document Decisions to Strengthen Accountability and Future Plans
Often, things move so fast in a crisis that it can be hard to remember every message or decision that was made. When it comes time to analyze the response and train for the next event, it’s important to have accurate documentation to evaluate.
At OSU, our documentation approach focuses on capturing as much information as possible in a single document — including internal communications that shaped external messaging and decisions — while acknowledging that some details may inevitably be missed.
It’s important to document where/who information comes from and when. For example, we should document when we receive weather reports and where they came from, as well as information we are receiving from OSUPD and the EOC, who can communicate directly with personnel on the scene.
Documentation can be used to justify decisions after a crisis event and develop a standard or best practice for future scenarios. We track decision-making timeliness to understand response effectiveness, when messaging is requested and distributed, and how it’s distributed.
Some of the best practices we have developed for documentation include
- Start early and document everything
- Set up systems to automatically record any online meetings to transcribe later
- Create a specific channel of communication for your team during a crisis
Train Your Team and Conduct Tabletop Exercises
When it comes down to it, just like sports teams, the best crisis response plans are useless without training. At OSU, we conduct monthly training exercises, including tabletop simulations. These exercises prepare our team for various scenarios, like cybersecurity threats, natural disasters and active shooter incidents.
We hear from speakers who are experts in crisis response or have experienced tragedy on their own to learn the things they wish they knew. Some members of our team have even sought additional online training through FEMA to expand their knowledge of crisis response.
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While we can prepare how we respond to a crisis, we can’t plan where we will be when it occurs, so we also train for remote crisis response. We recognize that in a hybrid work environment, some team members may not be physically present during an emergency.
Proactive Preparation Brings Reliable Results
By establishing clear roles, training regularly and leveraging the right technology, any organization — whether a university, K-12 school or corporation — can transform its communications team into a high-reliability crisis response unit.
At OSU, our work in this area has already proven its value. When the next crisis hits, we know exactly who is responsible for what, how we will communicate and where to direct the flow of information.
Preparation today means a coordinated, effective response tomorrow.
Shannon Rigsby is OSU’s office of brand management associate director of public information (PIO).
NOTE: The views expressed by guest bloggers and contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Campus Safety.
