• Time: 20 hours
    • Free Certificate
    One morning, you awake to news agencies reporting a major fire threatening your office building. You recall your organization recently practiced its quarterly disaster preparedness exercise, and you are fully aware of what to do in this situation. You know what to do, who to contact, and the location of the alternate office to use in case of an emergency. You are concerned but confident you have a plan in place. You know your role as a key member of the organization's crisis communication team (CMT). You help management by preparing a news release and updating the company's website with factual information on the who, what, when, and where details of the event. You use social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, and traditional media, such as radio and TV, to inform internal stakeholder groups (such as senior leadership, employees, and investors) and external stakeholder groups (such as customers, clients, local officials, and the general public) with an appropriate key message. During times of crisis, the public relations specialist helps management communicate sound, safe, and responsible actions to protect and defend the organization from harm or damage.

    Crisis communication is one of the many specialized areas or functions of public relations. This course will specifically focus on using crisis communication to protect and defend a company or organization facing a problem or challenge threatening to harm its brand or reputation. As a sudden and unexpected serious event, a crisis can fall into four categories: acts of God, mechanical problems, human error, and management decision or indecision. On any given day, there can be any number of crises – pandemics, natural disasters, grounded airplanes, stranded cruise ship passengers, or senior government officials or CEOs who are fired or asked to resign following inappropriate behavior, to name a few examples. If you want to learn to become a professional public relations specialist, it is important to have a basic understanding of the important role public relations has in helping guide a company or organization through a crisis or serious event.

    This course is designed for practical applications of crisis communication principles. It explains what communication problems look like, how to deal with them, and how to anticipate crises as part of conducting an effective public relations program. It will also explain the role of a crisis communication team and teach you how to write a crisis communication plan. Most importantly, it will emphasize the value and importance of using social media in a crisis communication plan and in marketing. Through cases covered in the course and perhaps your own research or experience, you will gain an appreciation and understanding of the necessity of a well-thought-out crisis communication management system. The overall goal of this course is to help develop your skills and abilities as part of a crisis management team to help develop a credible and tested communication plan to respond effectively to a crisis.


    • Unit 1: Crisis Communication Introduction

      This unit will provide a basic framework for understanding crisis communication and its application in a professional business environment. This unit discusses what crisis communication involves, types of crises, crisis responses, and crisis communication management. By explaining how crisis communication relates to organizational communication and then looking at problems that lead to crisis communication, you can learn the definition and principles of crisis communication and develop a deeper understanding of its value in today's marketplace.

      Completing this unit should take you approximately 2 hours.

    • Unit 2: Preparing for a Crisis

      This unit will provide specific steps for preparing for a crisis. This unit begins with an overview exploring how to use a SWOT analysis - looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats - to assess how a company operates within its environment. As part of strategic business planning, this unit covers setting goals and objectives that can also be applied to crisis contingency planning. This includes learning the basics of preparing a written crisis communication plan coordinating both internally and externally for a specific organization or company. Additionally, you will learn about the various roles employees, leaders, and managers play in crisis management. Because each organization or company is unique in its size and has a specific mission, the roles should be modified appropriately. For example, a large government office may have multiple public affairs specialists providing information to a central public affairs officer who serves as the key spokesperson. Each subordinate public affairs specialist may be assigned to work in internal, community relations, or media relations areas as part of the crisis communication plan. Other management roles may involve coordinating information for news releases with other private and government agencies. In this unit, you will also learn how a press conference should be conducted and how the 24/7 digital news environment affects the need for quick and accurate responses to news media inquiries. Depending on the type of crisis, it may require roles and responsibilities involving physical and personal security, personnel issues handled by human resources, legal counsel for liabilities, and medical liaisons coordinating information on injuries and deaths. All of these roles help management make responsible decisions that will help minimize damage and harm and help assess when and how quickly the organization can resume normal daily business operations.

      Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.

    • Unit 3: Using Social Media during a Crisis

      It is no secret that using social media during a crisis is necessary. There have been recent crisis events, such as a natural disaster, where national and regional government emergency response officials have used social media to keep people informed. Whether you use social media to quickly help diffuse an issue or provide real-time information during search and rescue efforts, you should learn how to best use it. This means it is also important to properly integrate social media into businesses' and organizations' overall strategic communication plans. This unit also profiles a successful social media campaign, explains how to protect your social media channel, and provides perspectives from online social media communicators.

      Completing this unit should take you approximately 5 hours.

    • Unit 4: Designing a Crisis Communication Plan (CCP)

      There is no one-size-fits-all regarding crisis communication plans (CCP). This is true whether you are designing a CCP for a government agency, nonprofit organization, or private company. However, there are some key elements that each CCP is expected to include in the broad terms of pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis actions. When spelled out in the CCP, you want to address pre-crisis preparations, safety, notifications of key staff, listing the crisis communication team (CCT), their functions and contact information, situation assessments, developing key messages, media releases, and communication updates. There is always a need to address post-crisis actions, such as evaluating how the CCT performed and lessons learned before starting the cycle again to prepare for the next crisis. In this unit, you will learn about the basic components of the crisis communication plan and how to develop a CCP in a digital format. Regardless of the format, the CCP should be coordinated among all participating agencies and organizations. It should be tested or practiced to see what works and what does not so modifications can be made before you need to use it.

      Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.

    • Unit 5: Developing Strategic Messages

      This unit will focus on how to use key messages to tell your company's story and how to incorporate key strategic messages in online and traditional media tools. This unit will also discuss how to help managers communicate timely, effective, and truthful messages while adhering to sound business principles.

      Imagine you work for a company trying to negotiate with its union employees for their routine 4- to 6-year contract renewal. Imagine you are the public relations spokesperson for the second largest company in the United States, and there are few trained spokespersons at your company, including you. What starts as a routine labor union contract renewal turns bad. As the spokesperson for your company, what do you do? In 1997, a situation like this occurred when UPS employees were negotiating their contracts. When talks failed to produce an agreement that provided more job security through full-time employment and less part-time employment, the Teamster's Union announced that its UPS employees would go on strike. Approximately two weeks later, in hindsight and with the help of the case study authors, management reviewed how effective planning and message development could have resulted in a better outcome. In this unit, you will learn more about crisis management while reading the UPS case study.

      Completing this unit should take you approximately 5 hours.

    • Course Feedback Survey

      Please take a few minutes to give us feedback about this course. We appreciate your feedback, whether you completed the whole course or even just a few resources. Your feedback will help us make our courses better, and we use your feedback each time we make updates to our courses.

      If you come across any urgent problems, email contact@saylor.org.

    • Certificate Final Exam

      Take this exam if you want to earn a free Course Completion Certificate.

      To receive a free Course Completion Certificate, you will need to earn a grade of 70% or higher on this final exam. Your grade for the exam will be calculated as soon as you complete it. If you do not pass the exam on your first try, you can take it again as many times as you want, with a 7-day waiting period between each attempt.

      Once you pass this final exam, you will be awarded a free Course Completion Certificate.