Crisis communication with Haiilo

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Communication is important. A straightforward communication culture in the company has a positive effect on success. Haiilo allows you to take a major step towards direct communication: you promote interaction at eye level. Good communication goes hand in hand with transparent communication: Get your employees involved, inform them at an early stage! This is particularly true in the event of crises and emergencies.

There are emergencies that can mean that working areas can no longer be accessed. There are many different scenarios here, whether damage to the building, fire or water damage, external threats that lead to an evacuation, or increased cases of illness in the form of epidemics or even pandemics. In these cases, too, Haiilo is THE communication platform for you. 

How can an emergency be managed with Haiilo?

We recommend focusing news on the current situation. In times like these, posts at an informative level are particularly important to keep employees up to date and provide instructions. We make particular use of three elements here: 

  • The Homepage
  • A page for company news
  • A Community for the crisis team.

We relocate communication from decision-makers into a Community. Why not a group chat? The reason is clarity. Topics change very quickly in a group chat and it’s not always easy to see which message a response refers to. A Community can be structured using our apps. This helps you to maintain an overview, even in difficult times, and agree on topics and processes.

What does this mean exactly? In the event of an emergency, you need to control internal responsibilities as quickly as possible and specify who belongs to the crisis team and thus to this Community. Examples of this include representatives of the management, communication, the press office, IT, and decision-makers from relevant operational areas.

Provide information via pages

All employees nowadays are very closely networked and information appears from everywhere. The communication managers have a tough job if incorrect news or instructions become established. They now don’t just have to provide information to employees, but also convince them of which information is correct. This creates obstacles and delays in the information chain, which can have disastrous consequences, especially in a crisis.

It’s important to clearly control information sovereignty in the company right from the start  and ensure that important information and news are distributed reliably and transparently.

We recommend an extra page for emergency communication that's set to "automatic subscription" for all employees. This page exclusively concerns this exceptional situation and is used to convey stability and security. This means:

  • Clear (emergency) contacts
  • Current codes of conduct, policies, and service instructions
  • Transparent distribution of information to suppress the office grapevine
  • Create one point of contact for employees’ questions.

As the focus here is on information and not on interaction, the first app we place – and thus the entrance gate to the page – is the content app. In terms of presentation, Haiilo gives you lots of options. You decide, depending on your company and current situation, how this entrance gate should be constructed. It’s recommended to provide a short overview of what can be found on the page. With the help of the widget "Newest wiki article", you can link to one or more wikis. 

By directly linking contacts, you create short paths for your employees when they have questions. The user profile widget offers you this option. 

Which other apps are suitable?

The top priority in times of crisis should be to reach and inform all employees. The blog app offers the particular advantage that all of the news that’s published here is directly pushed to your Haiilo app users.

Tip:
Use an app several times – like the wiki app here – to clearly present many different topics.

Consider, as described above, setting the new page to auto-subscribe so that every employee has direct access to the information and can find out what they need to know quickly.

Information beyond the company

In an emergency determined by external influences, there’s a flood of information. Every news magazine and other organizations of public life have something to say on the topic. With Haiilo, you can also integrate external sources to directly counteract untrustworthy information. With a focused Homepage, you can bring the vision of your digital Homepage to life here, too. One entrance gate to all information: internal and external.

As with our company page, the focus here is on "top-down" communication. With direct click paths, you make it possible to access further information here quickly. You can use the following:

  • the teaser widget with the link to our company page,
  • a button to report emergencies,
  • the leading blog article on the current situation in the company,
  • contact with the company doctor,
  • an RSS feed with reports from external sources,
  • a video widget,
  • further link buttons marked in different colors.

Tip:
Keep your Homepage clearly presented! Large, clear buttons are easier to see at a glance than small bookmarks.

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