Strength in a Storm: The Rise of Internal Comms in a Crisis

As organizational risks grow more complex, internal crisis communication is emerging not just as a support function, but as a critical lever of resilience and recovery.

Across multiple countries and industries, leaders are coming to understand what internal communicators have known all along: When crisis strikes, the company’s employees often experience the situation differently and more directly than many of those on the outside—so a different and more direct internal crisis communications response is necessary to help people and organizations survive and thrive in the most difficult times.

Plan Ahead to Protect From Harm

The teams that weather the storm and come out strongest know that poor internal crisis communication doesn’t just fail to minimize harm, it can worsen it by creating heightened trauma, low morale, misunderstanding and an inability to confront the challenge.

They recognize that internal crisis communication must be strategically planned and carefully implemented to keep employees safe, supported, empowered and enabled all the way through the most challenging times they may ever face.

They commit to creating a physically and psychologically safe work environment well before crisis ever strikes, and they prioritize meaningful two-way communication inside the organization as a proactive strategy through good times and bad.

Importantly they know not to apply cut-and-paste crisis messages and channels just because they have seen them work somewhere else for someone else.

They use a deep and rounded understanding of the difficulty they face, and of how that difficulty is experienced physically and psychologically inside the organization to shape a strategy that will cater to a full range of human and organizational internal crisis communications needs.

Tune in to What the Internal Community Really Needs

When a crisis hits, employees often feel the impact more personally and more directly than other stakeholders. Their roles, relationships, and responsibilities in the company mean they have unique crisis needs, and whether they’re directly affected or working behind the scenes, they’ll observe, analyze and interpret every experience and every piece of information available (or unavailable) to them as they quickly form an attitude or opinion about what is happening, why, and with what effects.

All of this will shape and seed:

• How they think and feel about the crisis
• How they think and feel about the organization
• How they think and feel about themselves
• And what they say and do next

This means that if they want to recover well after crisis, organizational leaders have a responsibility not just to keep people physically and psychologically safe, they also have a responsibility to understand and meet a full range of real human and organizational needs that emerge during chaos and disruption.

Build Back Stronger with The 7S of Internal Crisis Communication

My new book, Internal Communication in Times of Crisis: How to secure employee trust, support and advocacy in crisis situations, helps organizations consider why we need to meet different internal crisis needs, and it explains how we can all take a more forward looking and strategic approach to internal crisis communication.

To help with this, I introduce the 7S of Internal Crisis Communication, a new framework designed to help leaders and communicators take a more structured, human-centered approach to meeting the key human and organizational needs that emerge through the lifecycle of crisis.

The framework prioritizes essential human needs and moves incrementally to meet fundamental interconnected organizational needs as the crisis evolves and continues through each stage of its lifecycle, eventually coming back stronger.

1. Surviving needs

The priority in crisis is to keep people safe from harm, so surviving communication is the priority. This type of communication must be simple and directive, delivered in the heat of the crisis. It must disclose what is happening and enable employees to protect themselves and others.

For best effect, communicators should establish clear information hierarchies and designated channels in advance so critical messages can be delivered fast, consistently and without confusion.

2. Supporting needs

Close behind this, companies must deliver the emotional, psychological and practical help necessary to re-establish their employees’ personal and professional wellbeing and to help people to function within the crisis.

Because crises differ, supporting needs differ too, and they may change as the crisis evolves. A poorly judged supporting message can spark a sense of anger, betrayal and outrage, so supporting communication and leadership must show empathy and compassion for everyone affected by the situation, and it must be tailored to focus on the needs of the individual or group(s) it is directed towards.

 Use audience segmentation to tailor messages and resources to different needs across the organization.

3. Sensemaking needs

Next comes the need to build crisis understanding and help people make sense of what is happening in a way that will help the organization re-establish trust and enable crisis advocacy.

 Employees and contractors will seek information to make sense of a crisis whether their organization provides this or not, so it’s very important to provide regular, transparent updates that connect facts with meaning, and it is necessary to facilitate conversations that help everyone understand not just what’s happening but why it matters and what it means for them.

4. Stabilizing needs

Only when these first three human needs have been satisfied, can the company begin to stabilize; set out to restore a sense of organizational confidence, competence and belonging; and take the first steps to recovery.

 Communicators should use different communication channels to reinforce shared values and early moments of progress to rebuild confidence and foster a sense of unity and direction.

5. Stimulating needs

From here, the organization is ready to get going again—to enable the full strategic and tactical crisis response and get people energized and engaged as they achieve crisis management, business continuity and business recovery goals.

 Use internal campaigns, storytelling, and two-way engagement to reignite purpose, motivation and focus on recovery goals.

6. Sustaining needs

It’s important to recognize that crisis need lasts long after the immediate impact is felt, and the long tail of a crisis can feel unending.

Communicators and leaders must mitigate against the risks of burnout and low morale as they seek to build employee resilience, maintain a sense of progress and help teams continue toward recovery as the crisis lingers in the slow chronic stretch.

Monitor employee sentiment and wellbeing closely during this phase and adjust your messaging cadence to avoid fatigue while maintaining momentum.

7. Strengthening needs

Finally, when the worst of the crisis is over, attention can turn to learning, growing and coming back stronger.

Celebrate achievements, share lessons learned, and involve employees in shaping future preparedness to build long-term trust and resilience.

And finally...

As the crisis landscape changes, our thinking about internal crisis communication needs to change too, and considering the internal community at the heart of the crisis response is essential.

When employees feel informed, valued and empowered, they don’t just get through a crisis, they transform it. Supporting and enabling them effectively is the only way to fully protect and strengthen our organizations in the turbulent times we all face.

• Alison Arnot's new book, Internal Communication in Times of Crisis: How to secure employee trust, support and advocacy in crisis situations is available online and in all good bookshops worldwide.