By Siti Zulaikha Shawaludin
GOMBAK, 22 April 2015: What is a crisis? What are the issues concerning a crisis? And how do organisations handle a crisis? These are some of the pertinent questions often asked by the public relations practitioners and communication scholars.
In conjunction with Media and Communication Week 2015 held last week, the IPRMSA – IIUM Chapter had organised a forum on “Challenges in managing crises” on 16 April where prominent speakers from the industry were invited to share their views and experiences on handling of crises.
It was designed for Communication students to learn and expose themselves to the knowledge and reality of a crisis situation and how issues are handled and resolved.
The speakers for the forum were the President of Institute of Public Relations Malaysia (IPRM) who is also the Director-General of Information, Dato’ Hj. Ibrahim Abdul Rahman, Director of Communication and Publicity, Tourism Malaysia, Mohmed Razip Hasan, and Chairman and Principal Consultant of Samanea PR, Aisha Rashid. The forum was moderated by Communication lecturer, Aznan Mat Piah.
More than 100 students and lecturers from Communication Department attended the forum which was held at the Seminar Room, HS building.
Aisha Rashid started the session by defining the term ‘crisis’. She said: “Crisis is being defined as abnormal, unstable and complex situation that represents a threat to the strategic objectives and reputation to the existence of an organisation.” The key word in a crisis is accusation or perception that threatens the reputation of an organisation.
Aisha stressed the importance of preparedness for an organisation to face a crisis. She said companies or organisations which do not make preparations to face any form of crisis would invite disaster to their business because it would take sometime before a company could recover and go back to normalcy. They must therefore think of business continuity and restore public confidence towards their organisations.
Hence, Aisha emphasised the need for companies to prepare for crisis management by paying attention to intense scrutiny, acute pressure, business continuity and high organisational risk. They have to examine the crisis preparedness or prepare for the worst, and to have crisis drills in place to face the extraordinary challenges.
Aisha said: “Companies must develop a crisis policy to plan for crisis leadership, procedures, and training for staffs, as well as to inculcate a culture of vigilance and alertness in the face of a crisis. There has to be serious thinking at the strategic level to deal with the crisis and in answering to their stakeholders and stockholders to restore confidence immediately.”
Aisha spoke of the need for incident management and the setting up of Emergency Response Team (ERT), Crisis Management Team (CMT) and Crisis Communication Team (CCT).
Dato’ Hj. Ibrahim Abdul Rahman spoke on the government’s response to the two Malaysia Airlines (MAS) incidents involving MH370 and MH17 in a worst air crisis that hit the nation in 2014.
He said the crises that hit Malaysia within a spate of less than four months between the two incidents, were unprecedented. The last serious crisis experienced by Malaysia was in 1977 during the Tanjung Kupang MAS air crash, but at that time the technology wasn’t that sophisticated compared to the current situation when news and information travels very fast that created a lot of enthusiasm and sensation that caused alarm among the public and made it more difficult for the authorities to deal with the crisis.
As a member of the national Crisis Management Team, Dato’ Hj. Ibrahim was privy to the insights of the crisis leadership and the management of the two incidents as to how issues were strategically managed. He said it was the first time in history that Malaysia has attracted world attention when the international media from various parts of the world flocked to Kuala Lumpur to get first hand stories out for their media.
“Dealing with the foreign media is not that simple as they constantly put pressure on our officials to respond to their queries to get latest information out on the crisis.
We really experienced the increase in the stress level during the crisis, especially with officials having to work round the clock for several days. Among the prominent journalists we dealt with were big names like CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Richard Quest who were really demanding and pressing for latest updates,” Dato’ Hj. Ibrahim said.
Dato’ Hj. Ibrahim shared his personal experience in managing a crisis during crucial time and gave a very insightful real examples on dealing with the tragic incidents.
According to Dato’ Hj. Ibrahim, there were a lot of constraints and challenges faced by the Crisis Management Team such as the issuing of contradicting and contradictory statements especially during the early stage of a crisis, the nuances of having to deal with people of different culture, the need to be transparent and vigilant, and the importance of observing certain standard and operating procedures.
In fact, he said, there were a lot of lessons learnt from the two crises. Among others, he emphasised “the importance of developing the digital assets to deal with crisis situation effectively.”
The third speaker, Mohmed Razip Hasan defined crisis management as “a systematic approach with guidelines”. He touched on the subject of crisis of perception that is related to risk and reputation management as it involved Malaysia being a destination for tourists.
He spoke of the need to handle branding management as the load factor on MAS flights was bound to be affected following the two crises. And this, he said, would have serious implications on the tourism revenue and market.
Mohmed Razip shared some useful tips in the face of a crisis: to always be prepared in expecting a crisis; to work with media closely; to ensure the media do not get false information, and to avoid them from making any speculation, lest the public at large would be misled.
He said during a crisis situation it is important to always be clear and specific when communicating with the media. This requires organisations to avoid any ambiguous statement that may carry different meaning. There is therefore the need to understand the concept of a holding statement, an interim statement and an official media statement which must be very focus and factual.
Mohmed Razip also spoke of the significance of the role of a spokesperson during the time of crisis who must appear caring or concerned when communicating with the media.
The speaker emphasised the importance of communication policy and planning to enable the media to stay with the agenda in the digital era.
The forum ended with some working advice from the speakers and the reminder on the need for students to keep abreast with development in the industry and to learn from the practitioners. Overall, the forum was a success as the session had revealed real experiences and provided useful tips in managing a crisis.***
Photo Naim Fadil