best practices in crisis communications using your intranet

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BEST PRACTICES inCrisis Communication Using your Hospital Intranet

Anne La Francis

Director of Sales and Marketing

HospitalPortal.net

Angela Novak

Client Services Director

H2M


Agenda Best Practices in Internal Communication

Creating an Internal Communication Program

Using an internal communication program for crisis management

Types of Healthcare Crises

Key tips for using your Intranet for Crisis Communication

Strategies for crisis communication preparation

Strategies for crisis communication response

How to better distribute and present crisis communication to staff

Tools for providing leadership with valuable staff feedback during the crisis

Post-crisis evaluation


HospitalPortal.net & H2M share a mutual client… “We have relied on HospitalPortal.net to manage our intranet for many years. The “Central Line” as it is called is a vital tool used for internal communications with our 900 employees and 80+ medical staff at Lake Region Healthcare. Their easy-to-use interface helps us to keep intranet content fresh and relevant.”______________________________________________________________________________________________“Lake Region Healthcare has been a client of H2M since the fall of 2012 and have become an extension of our marketing department. They treat our business as if it were their own, seeking to learn and understand our industry and marketplace through in-person visits, extensive research and collaboration with our internal staff on projects from media production to graphic design and PR to content development.”

Katie N. JohnsonVP, Marketing & Communicationsand LRH FoundationLake Region HEALTHCARE

http://hospitalportal.net/


Creating an Internal Communication

Program


Why internal communication?

Employee engagement

Brand ambassadorship

Work smarter, not harderFor every 2% increase in employee satisfaction,

there is a 1% increase in retention…

Your Employees Power Your Long-term ROI.


Employee engagement Proactive transparency builds trust and

respect between the health system and its

employees.

Regular internal communication unites

employees by breaking down the silos

and/or barriers between service lines,

departments and locations.


Brand ambassadors Your employees are your best brand

ambassadors.

Because your patients spend the majority of

their time interacting with your employees,

consistency and authenticity in messaging is

key.

Patients can never love your hospital until your employees love it first.


Work smarter, not harder You are already developing strong external

content, so capture the messages in one

centralized intranet portal, making it easy for

employees to stay informed and efficient for you

to publish.


What’s the best approach? An internal communication program that’s integrated within your overall marketing

communication department and that leverages multiple employee touchpoints.

Tactics include:

Become your own publisher

Tell employees first

Make it a two-way street

Maintain a regular schedule

Launch a brand ambassador program


Become your own publisher Manage all of your communication messages across

all channels with a comprehensive content calendar.

Channels should include all communication

touchpoints throughout the employee experience.


Tell employees first

Healthcare employees are accustom

to being empowered; they are on the

frontlines of making vital decisions

everyday.

Healthcare employees should be the

first to know…and sometimes the

ONLY to know.

Daily Happenings

• Trainings

• Celebrations

• Menus

• Quality reports

• Census information

• Births

Earned Media/PR Updates

• Hospital improvements

• New facility upgrades

• Mergers or acquisitions

• Community programs

Leadership Updates

• Leadership blogs

• Leadership academy

Social Feed

• Social network updates

Crisis Communication

• Emergency preparation and response


Make it a two-way street Successful internal communication offers

employees an opportunity to ask

questions, give ideas and participate in the

communication overall.

This should happen both through your

intranet and in-person.


Maintain a regular schedule Proactive communication on a regular schedule is

key.

Offer relevant, timely content and they will keep

coming back for more.


Launch a Brand Ambassador Program Empower though leaders and influential

employees to be your boots-on-the-ground

messengers.

Arm them with key talking points and Q&As.

Gather what they are hearings so leadership

gains frontline knowledge.


Healthcare Crises - Be Prepared

School shooting, bomb threat,

flood…blizzards

Leverage the channels your

employees already trust

Red River Flood of 2009 – 100

year flood

When a robust internal communication program may mean the most


Red River Flood of 2009

City was called to evacuate

Weeks of Incident Command

This is the time to execute and execute

well.

Images courtesy of documentingreality.com


Your communication style

Timing should be consistent, frequent,

and aligned with staff schedules.

Information should be relevant,

concise and action-oriented.

Align your internal and external

messaging.

Tone should be confident, calm and direct.


What is the main channel your organization uses for crisis communication?

Email

External-facing website

Printed newsletters/material

Intranet

No consistent internal communication

POLL QUESTION #1


Best Practices for Crisis Management Have a Plan

Put a Team in Charge

Utilize Monitoring Tools

Manage Reputational Damage

Respond Quickly


Have a Preparation Plan

Connect staff

Create awareness

Engage staff

Identify staff and leadership

Establish guidelines/standardize procedures

Offer proper training/education

Publish important documents

Keep staff accountable


Have a Response Plan

Timely communication & alerts

Incident response team pages

Ongoing updates

Marketing/PR

Reputation management

Social & brand ambassadorship

Staff and resource scheduling


How-to Resources

Action Sheets

Incident Chain of Command

Track, monitor and report on response actions

Proactive planning throughout crisis

Management dashboards

Have a Response Plan cont’d


Put a Team in Charge Designate a team/candidate to be the “speaker” or

the voice

Identify the key stakeholders that should participate

and outline their roles and responsibilities for the

communication preparation and response

Determine primary contact person for govt.

agencies/organizations and the first response

personnel for each department


Utilize Crisis Monitoring Tools Census Boards for monitoring hospital capacity

Vulnerability analysis charts

Quick links to emergency centers (FEMA, CDC) and

other local hospitals

Weather alerts via RSS feeds from local resources,

media alerts and monitoring tool data

Real-time monitoring

Read acknowledgements/Notice of

acceptance


Manage Reputational Damage Train staff ahead of time Monitor media in real-time

Brandwatch Cision Critical Mention Metro Monitor

Build Trust Be Honest Don’t Argue with Commenters Take a Human Approach


Respond Quickly Engage chain of command

Alert Employees First

Keep Employees Constantly Informed

Share intranet links to crisis

operational plan


Post-Crisis Evaluation Plan Outline challenges, successes and lessons learned

Identify actions that prevented successful execution during any point in response and

crisis management plan

Amend or revise crisis messaging or crisis policies and procedures if needed

Evaluate short and long term goals

Prepare debriefing reports and metrics on success of response

Monitor reputational exposure and develop remediation plan if needed

Refine crisis communication strategy and crisis operational plan if needed


Intranet Features to help with

Crisis Management

Training/educational resources

Announcements (News, Scrollers, Image Slideshows)

Blogs

Contact & Emergency Vendor directories

Integrated Policies & Procedures

Mass notifications/alerts

Chain of commands lists

Emergency codes

Dedicated pages to crisis topic

Crisis Forums

Ticket management

Project teams real-time Chat


Training/Educational Resources Training videos

Training modules for crises for new hires

Relevant educational resources on

crisis topics

Class registration for crisis

management classes

RSS Feeds from emergency resource

centers

Links to LMS providers and ongoing access

to crisis education


Policies and Procedures All content becomes searchable

Search by policy keyword, title, number

Job action sheets

Facility maps

Read acks on all policy documents

newly updated or revised

Notice of acceptance feature to track

whether or not an authenticated

employee has reviewed a document


Create images ahead of time for certain

types of crises

Keeps the information front and center

and highly noticeable

Can be hyperlinked to a emergency page

with additional information on the crisis

AnnouncementsHome Page Slideshow/Image Gallery


Devoted section to the most timely crisis updates

Images speak louder than words sometimes – easily add

images to your crisis communications

Subscription based news – asking staff to follow stories if

potential crisis is on the rise

Enable or disable comments for the most optimal

engagement about the crisis

Ability to preset these to go live immediately and expire

on a set date

AnnouncementsHot News Section


Can be used for any type of mass

messaging

Managing reputational publicity

Often used as a crisis alert for:

Fires

Evacuations

System Outages

Local community crises

AnnouncementsEmergency Scroller Mechanism


Collaborate, learn, and use 2-way communication

during a crisis

Enable comments to engage staff

Access to past archived posts

Manage PR messages by sending out facts what the

hospital is doing about it

Examples

Departmental, Personal, Leadership/CEO

Adding a connection

Vlog

Leadership Blogs


Crisis Forums Staff Forums dedicated to a

specific crisis

All content becomes searchable

Categorize by Crisis Topic

Departmental Forums

Project collaboration

Other forum examples

Hospital Wikis

Classifieds

Crisis team projects

Ride sharing coordination


Crisis Dedicated Pages General emergency pages

Dedicated crisis specific pages

(Ebola)

Crisis staff team project

collaboration pages

Quick links and resources

Latest news updates

Submit a ticket request

Emergency contacts

3rd party iFrame content from

emergency resources (CDC)


Crisis Management Tools Incident Command

System

Emergency Action Wizard

Emergency Codes

Can be placed on any

pages

Many clients create as

hidden component and go

live only during the

emergency


Forms & Workflows Over 100+ forms available in library

Easy to custom create forms ahead of time for

certain crises

Incident reporting forms

Ask crisis management

Time off request


Crisis Response Tickets Help desk ticket tracking

Crisis response ticket management

for completing tasks associated with

the crisis

Facility tickets for maintenance due

to crisis

Log all issues for appropriate staff to

take action

Email reminders

Can pre-create crisis categories


Restricted View Pages Board & Physician Pages

Crisis Meeting packets, notes and

archives

Committee lists

Calendars

Crisis Dashboards

Links to relevant crisis management

resources

On call schedule(s)

News and announcements


Q & A


THANK YOU!

Anne La FrancisHospitalPortal.net

Director of Sales and [email protected]

Angela NovakH2M

Client Services [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]