There have been some hairy communications crises that hit high-visibility companies in 2025. Here’s a small example:

 

• In September, Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe was ousted a year after taking the job for concealing an affair with a staffer—a clear breach of the world’s largest food company’s code of conduct.

 

• Also in September, controversy erupted over Meta’s use of back-to-school photos featuring teenage girls, some reportedly as young as 13, in promotional placements targeting adult men. Children’s images, some initially shared on private Instagram accounts, had been reposted into algorithmic slots as ad bait. The company responded by blaming its “recommendation engine.”

 

• Cloudflare, which many of the world’s websites and apps depend on to function, had a rocky end to 2025, suffering a series of global outages that left thousands of sites briefly unreachable. The first occurred in November when a software failure took down X, ChatGPT, Uber, Spotify and OpenAI. Less than a month later, the provider suffered a second outage that took sites including LinkedIn and Zoom down.

 

• Cracker Barrel updated its visual identity, removing the “old-timer” from the company’s old logo as part of a rebrand to appeal to younger consumers. Commentators on the American right saw the change as a sign the brand had “gone woke,” and the company was forced to reverse course.

 

If we are to take anything away from the fallout from these companies’ activities, it’s the potential for any crisis to become a global sensation in a matter of minutes. Thanks to the power of social media and the accountability we place on organizations, the response to an incident is just as – if not more – important than the crisis itself.

 

When a crisis hits, timing is everything. Planning ensures the right information reaches the right people at the right time. You’ll also keep your staff safe and minimize negative impact. A crisis communication plan should be a critical part of your internal communications strategy. 

 

Step 1: Anticipate crises

 

Name those who will be on your crisis team, including representative employees and management, and bring them together for a brainstorming session. Ensure you have monitoring processes in place, such as a whistleblowing system for employees or alerts for company mentions.

 

Step 2: Know your team and assign responsibilities

 

Senior management will ideally be on the frontline delivering public statements, but many roles help manage a crisis from the inside out. Include representatives from HR, legal, and communications/PR in the process. Determine who will be responsible for key elements such as sharing information, ensuring staff are accounted for, or signing off on critical decisions. 

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Create a backup plan if key individuals are unavailable. A backup list of subject experts can be helpful, but until a crisis hits, you may not know whose knowledge will be required to resolve a situation.

 

Step 3: Map out your internal audience

 

Employees’ circumstances often affect how you reach them in a critical situation. Some may work from home or be out on the road; some may be in different offices or time zones, and there may be non-desk employees without easy access to a computer.

 

Your internal audience isn’t just direct employees: it also includes your suppliers, seasonal or contracted workers, and possibly communities or customers. Grouping those individuals and considering their unique needs will help you identify any communication gaps or black holes that could cause further issues.

 

Step 4: Map out and audit your communication channels

 

Knowing your audience will help you understand your communications channels. There is no silver bullet. Take a multi-channel approach to get the message out when it matters, so consider everything from email, intranet, website, social media, manager cascades (a communication method where leaders pass information down sequentially through each level of management until it reaches all employees), or printed posters in communal areas.

 

Draft a list of channels and the person or people responsible for necessary permissions, rights, and access so you can remove barriers for your crisis team. Check them on a regular basis to make certain the information stored in them up to date and when they were last tested.

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Step 5: Get a two-way employee alert system in place

 

Crisis communication isn’t a one-way street. In situations with potential threats to safety, it’s essential that your staff be able to reach managers, and your crisis team can get instant status visibility and identify those who may be at risk. The ability to send a mass communication along multiple channels simultaneously and understand who has received, read, and acknowledged it is vital.

 

Step 6: Get safety and emergency protocols in place

 

Policies are so much more than a legal requirement. They help ensure staff are informed and understand their responsibilities during a crisis, as well as in day-to-day roles. Protocols should cover everything from travel safety to responses during adverse weather, a fire, or any other physical threat to help manage incidents far more effectively.

 

Make safety and emergency protocols accessible, visible, and easy to find. Set regular review timescales to keep them up to date and consider how you’ll ensure they’re read by everyone involved. Include the documents during onboarding, and during regular training or awareness days with quizzes or polls that can keep the information front of mind.

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Step 7: Develop holding statements and templates 

 

You may not know what crisis is going to hit, but you can ensure you’re covered for that dreaded ‘grey area’ period before you have all the facts to release a statement or response. You can quickly modify and release holding statements and templates as needed. Templates can prompt you to include all the vital information when drafting an internal or external communication and can prove invaluable in a stressful or time-sensitive situation. When we’re under pressure, it’s amazing what we can unintentionally miss.

 

The bottom line, employees play a critical role in managing and resolving issues affecting companies. They can be your greatest asset or, potentially, your biggest liability. Front line spokespeople dealing directly with customers or the media will be in the spotlight. Failing to plan and prepare them effectively will cause further damage, threaten your brand reputation, and, in serious cases, may even threaten your organization's very existence.