02/ 04/ 2007
by Shannon McRae
As daylight was breaking, employees at Canton, Ohio-based Republic Storage divided into cleanup crews to assess the damage left behind hours earlier when a nearby creek flooded and sent 4 feet of water crashing into the company's plant and administrative offices. Armed with flashlights, employees poked around the soggy mess. One of them asked Republic Storage President Jim Anderson what everyone else was thinking: "Are we going to be all right?"
"I have no idea," Anderson replied honestly. "But as soon as I know, you'll know." Anderson's promise that morning defined his communication strategy during the next four months of cleanup: Tell everything you know as soon as you know it. Many attribute the company's ability to bounce back from $11 million worth of damage to his tell-it-like-it-is manner.
"We were concerned that an information gap would be filled with misinformation," Anderson says. By constantly communicating renovation updates to employees and clients, "we dispelled any rumors."
If your business faces an emergency--big or small--take Anderson's tips for communicating with different audiences:
Calming Employees
Notifying his 330 employees was Anderson's first priority the morning of the flood. Fallen power lines and standing water made the area unsafe. So Anderson called local radio stations and asked them to announce that the plant was closed. "Rock 'n' roll, country--we called every station we thought people listened to." Soon, deejays were on air advising Republic Storage employees to stay at home and wait for notification on when to return to work.
Within days after the flood, Republic Storage mailed employees instructions explaining how to log on to a password-protected Web site for daily updates, which Anderson wrote himself. At the end of each day, Anderson and the HR and marketing directors met with the recovery groups to assess the day's progress. After that meeting, Anderson updated the employee site with as many details as possible.
Keeping Customers Informed
Rumors swirl when news is unclear, and Anderson couldn't afford for his clients to hear incorrect information. Summer is the busiest season for the locker-manufacturing industry. Republic Storage's customers were depending on large locker deliveries to new schools in their areas. All of the lockers in the plant during the flood were scrapped, putting the company several weeks behind in an already tight schedule.
Rather than gloss over the problem, Anderson was honest. The day after the flood, he posted photos of the plant on the Web site so customers could understand the scope of the devastation. He also gave customers a choice: "If you can wait for us to get back up and running, great. If you need to go somewhere else, we understand." Eighty percent of his customers waited.
At Anderson's suggestion, one customer sent members of his local school board for a plant tour. "The school board members were very upset with our customer and didn't understand what was taking so long," he says. "We invited them to tour the plant so they could see all we were doing to get back to into production."
Web Extras
Find everything you need to know about planning for an emergency in your small business in the "Disaster Planning" section of www.NFIB.com/toolsandtips.
