“In the midst of a cri­sis, com­mu­ni­ca­tion is crit­i­cal.”

This is the firm be­lief of Lisa-Ann Joseph, the chief rep­u­ta­tion of­fi­cer and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of pub­lic re­la­tions and cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment Caribbean Ltd.

And so with the world cur­rent­ly bat­tling the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of eco­nom­ic hard­ships as a re­sult of mea­sures put in place to stymie the spread of the dis­ease, Joseph says that busi­ness­es need prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion in place now more than ever.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion was tra­di­tion­al­ly con­sid­ered as a soft skill Joseph not­ed, but in re­cent times busi­ness­es have start­ed re­al­is­ing ex­act­ly how im­por­tant it is to com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly with staff, clients, and the me­dia in a time of cri­sis.

“It is so im­por­tant for or­gan­i­sa­tions to com­mu­ni­cate with their cus­tomers for many dif­fer­ent rea­sons, to stay rel­e­vant, to cater to their needs, for cus­tomers to un­der­stand what the or­gan­i­sa­tion is do­ing in re­sponse to this pan­dem­ic and why it is do­ing what it is do­ing in or­der to cater for the needs of the cus­tomers,” Joseph said,

“And it is al­so crit­i­cal for your em­ploy­ees. If your em­ploy­ees are work­ing from home you have to have those com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines open, that’s why you find a lot of these Zoom meet­ings and oth­er meet­ing spaces are open­ing up be­cause if you don’t com­mu­ni­cate with your stake­hold­ers then you leave the en­vi­ron­ment open for spec­u­la­tion,” she said.

This spec­u­la­tion could lead to fur­ther prob­lems, Joseph ar­gued.

“The last thing you want is for our cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees to spec­u­late or any­thing. You want to make sure the com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines are open so peo­ple are abreast of facts and in­for­ma­tion and you are lead by this type of process in­stead of peo­ple think­ing what they want to,” she said.

Joseph said rel­e­vant, pre­cise and time­ly in­for­ma­tion is key dur­ing any cri­sis.

As such, she ar­gued all busi­ness­es should have a cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan to en­sure that ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed dur­ing an emer­gency to min­imise prob­lems caused by mis­lead­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Joseph has been in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the past 25 years.

And Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny was es­tab­lished 13 years ago.

“So part of my mis­sion for the past 13 years that Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment has been in ex­is­tence is not on­ly to deal with cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions but is al­so to get com­pa­nies to a point where they fore­see that in any or­gan­i­sa­tion you will have cri­sis sit­u­a­tions and be caught on the back foot. Be pre­pared for it,” Joseph said.

“For the past cou­ple years I have been push­ing cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion and I have been try­ing to get or­gan­i­sa­tions and the lead­er­ship with­in or­gan­i­sa­tions to un­der­stand that you have to pre­pare for cri­sis sit­u­a­tions,” Joseph said.

“What you find is that or­gan­i­sa­tions have plans on an op­er­a­tional lev­el or busi­ness re­cov­ery and con­ti­nu­ity plan but com­mu­ni­ca­tions is al­ways the by the way,” she said.

Joseph said com­pa­nies tend to be more re­ac­tive when a cri­sis aris­es.

In this time of COVID-19 Joseph said it would be ide­al for busi­ness­es to use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view their strate­gies when it comes to com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“There is some lev­el of down­time, this gives you the op­por­tu­ni­ty to plan for your new nor­mal and now that you have seen com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­come in the fore­front of what we’ve been do­ing deal­ing with this pan­dem­ic how do you en­sure that in your or­gan­i­sa­tion, your chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion are im­proved,” she said.

Joseph said so­cial me­dia has forced or­gan­i­sa­tions to be “more nim­ble on their feet and to be flex­i­ble in what they are do­ing.”

She said busi­ness­es are now man­dat­ed to keep the cus­tomer and the em­ploy­ees at the fore­front and that de­ci­sions are made in the best in­ter­est of peo­ple.

“This thing has now forced or­gan­i­sa­tions to keep peo­ple at the fore­front in a way that was not there be­fore,” she said.

Joseph was asked from a pro­fes­sion­al stand­point how she rat­ed the gov­ern­ment’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the midst of this cri­sis.

“I think the gov­ern­ment’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­sponse has been very good, it speaks to the prin­ci­ples of cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion in that the lead­er­ship is there in terms of com­mu­ni­cat­ing the poli­cies,” she said.

“In cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion, you may have a large spokesper­son body when things are go­ing great but when you are in a cri­sis you now have to re­fine your spokesper­sons and they are do­ing. It is lim­it­ed to a few per­sons and you bring in your sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts when re­quired,” she said.

“In cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions 101 it de­mands reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it de­mands a lot of rep­e­ti­tion, it de­mands feed­back mech­a­nisms to be put in place so what they are do­ing they are putting the prin­ci­ples of cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion in place. They are do­ing an ex­cel­lent job where that is con­cerned,” Joseph said.

Joseph called for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of cross-train­ing for staff to en­sure or­gan­i­sa­tions can eas­i­ly tran­si­tion in the face of dif­fi­cul­ty.

‘We have to en­sure that busi­ness can op­er­ate as nor­mal in an ab­nor­mal en­vi­ron­ment,” she said.

“Af­ter this pan­dem­ic, there are go­ing to be oth­er cri­sis sit­u­a­tions but oth­er cri­sis sit­u­a­tions on top of us ex­ist­ing in a new nor­mal en­vi­ron­ment that is go­ing to be a test,” Joseph said.