Dealing with an Employer Brand Fail? Your Crisis Comms Strategy for Employees Should Look Like This
After a brand fail, a company’s crisis communications strategy should focus on reputation management and repairing the relationship with current workers
No matter how big or how small the fail, the same basic strategies can be utilized to protect your brand, avoid making enemies, or worse – inspiring a hashtag.
Before the Crisis
If you’re researching this subject before experiencing a brand fail, then you’re in luck! There’s a lot you can do for your company now that will make managing a crisis much easier.
“Well before a brand’s reputation comes under fire, the brand should be leaning into its mission and values to guide decision making,” says Hinda Mitchell, President of Inspire PR Group. Mitchell is a recognized crisis management and response counselor to C-suite executives and national organizations in food, manufacturing, education, hospitality, and more.
She explains that companies use their mission and values to make all kinds of decisions, including brand partnerships, social media strategies, and even decisions about mass layoffs. Building a strong company culture where employees are valued and empathy is a key leadership skill will give you guideposts for handling a future crisis.
Taking the Right Steps
A lot can be learned from companies who fail to execute an effective crisis communications strategy for employees after a public mistake. Doing so is likely to hurt a brand’s reputation with the public and with current employees, and as the brand fail makes headlines, even the company’s future workforce is in jeopardy.
Gen Z, for example, care about working for ethical companies that prioritize sustainability, DEI initiatives, and racial justice, which is also true for Millennial workers. In just a few years, these younger generations will make up over half the workforce, and when a company slips up, they notice.
Mitchell cites the recent brand fail response from Adidas. The company delayed cutting ties with Kanye West after he made antisemitic comments and took a huge hit to their reputation and revenue, losing an estimated $250 million.
The immediate access and potential reach of social media adds a level of urgency to addressing serious brand fails. A mistake can quickly snowball into a #boycott of your brand or products. Adidas’ own employees took to social media to demand action, and that's not a good sign for the company’s public reputation or for future hiring efforts.
Taking the time and effort to build a successful crisis communications strategy for employees will help you avoid devolving into a panicked mess if you have to deal with a brand fail. But not to worry – the steps may be easier than you think.
Step 1: Engaging the Team
Before brainstorming a crisis communications strategy, Mitchell says the first and most important step is “being transparent and acknowledging the mistake.” She explains that “an authentic apology paired with how the brand will start to repair the damage done is key.”
Once you acknowledge the mistake to yourself, your team, and the public, you can start working on damage control.
Laura Gula, Director of Brand & Corporate Marketing at Revalize, believes the crisis management strategy starts with the communications and corporate marketing team.
As a global communications leader with more than 15-years of experience in delivering brand strategies and stories for high-growth software and tech consulting businesses, Gula believes these are the team members who “know how to identify solutions to crises, develop and execute the tactics to implement the solutions, and articulate what it all means to stakeholders ranging from a company’s C-suite to individual contributors.”
Once the strategy is laid out and the steps identified and explained, other team members can be brought onboard. “My teams typically have partnered with human resources, strategic operations, chiefs of staff, and executive assistants to make this kind of communication strategy a success,” says Gula.
With your key players fully engaged, it’s time to go company-wide with your strategy.
Step 2: Rebuilding the Relationship with Current Workers
Rebuilding the relationship with your current workers is a crucial step in a crisis communications strategy after a brand fail.
If you’ve already done the work of establishing a company and brand that your employees believe in, then Mitchell believes your workforce can be your strongest ambassadors in a crisis. She warns against only giving key information to top executives, rather than looping in all your employees. After all, the most important benefit of being transparent is winning the trust of your workers.
“Data supports transparency as a strategy for employee engagement and employee recruitment after a brand fail,” says Mitchell. She cites a Slack Future of Work study that found “80% of workers want to know more about how decisions are made in their organization, and 87% want their future company to be transparent.”
In other words, use appropriate communication channels to give your employees the information and tools they need to also be transparent when discussing the brand fail.
Gula agrees: “An investment in implementing vehicles to rebuild trust and establish transparency is key after an employer brand fail. This entails finding the right channels for communication with your employees and ensuring clear and consistent messaging.” She suggests utilizing digital tools like Slack or an in-person option like company town hall meetings to communicate with current workers.
And remember, who delivers the message can be just as important as what the message entails. According to Mitchell, “Employees are much more likely to trust their immediate supervisor than an unknown corporate spokesperson.”
Step 3: Planning for the Future
The future of work is all about a company’s culture – the values that guide everything from management style to hiring practices to environmental impact. When a brand fail opposes these values and makes headlines, this is what the top talent in your industry will know and remember about your company.
To continue attracting a skilled, talented workforce, Gula suggests companies use a three-part approach:
Recognize the failure
Take steps to learn from that failure
Make meaningful improvements
When evaluating lessons that can be learned from the brand fail, Gula says to always relate those lessons back to the company’s core values. Failure should be viewed as an opportunity to grow, not something to hide or shy away from. It’s essential for the company and the senior leadership team to keep moving forward.
On making meaningful improvements, Mitchell says, “It’s critically important that brands walk the talk – words without action are meaningless and actually can escalate the brand fail and drive skepticism and mistrust across an organization.”
She recommends using a hotwash exercise to help determine the appropriate next steps for making meaningful improvements. Usually a government exercise used after a national disaster, this emergency response concept can be applied to a crisis communications strategy.
The execution is fairly simple. Bring together key players from each department and discuss every aspect of the brand fail, including preparedness, message delivery, audience engagement, reputational impact, and collaboration. Encourage honest feedback from everyone at the table to help determine where the company needs to improve and what tools and resources can be added to better manage similar issues in the future.
Final Thoughts
“The biggest mistake that companies make after a brand fail is not acknowledging it,” says Gula. “Failure is an opportunity to grow and improve as a business and addressing it with transparency and decisiveness goes a long way in creating trust with your employees.”
A common mistake Mitchell has seen – and strongly warns against – is when a company recovering from a brand fail immediately resumes posting regular content on their website and social media channels, which she believes appears “tone-deaf and insensitive.”
Not acknowledging a mistake or moving on too quickly after a brand fail are likely to cause criticism from the public, disappointment from your current workers, and disengagement from your future hires – all completely avoidable with the right communications strategy.
Jennifer Johnson is a writer and researcher who works primarily in career services, recruiting, content development, and PR. But she's been known to take on any project that piques her interest.
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