Responsible Distribution Code VII is a hallmark standard of the National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD). Code VII requires a chemical distributor to be ready to talk to the media and other key stakeholders as a crisis situation unfolds.

 

At the 2023 ChemEdge Conference Responsible Distribution Workshop in The Woodlands, TX, I’ll do a deep dive into roles and assignments of various team members when a crisis situation is emerging.

 

Picture a variety of crises, such as a fire or a chemical spill. Now imagine the members of your team. Ask yourself, how many members of our team are likely to spontaneously head to the flashpoint of the event? Now ask yourself, how many should actually be heading to the event and how many should be managing other roles and responsibilities?

Too often, no one is assigned the task of writing a media statement or news release. That means it might be assigned on an ad-hoc basis.

 

Best practices in Responsible Distribution would be for each chemical distributor to have a Crisis Communications Plan. Such a written plan should outline which team members are responsible for various time-sensitive, critical tasks.

 

Here are some things to ponder:

• What information needs to be gathered about the situation?
• What methodology will be used to communicate that information to internal leaders?
• While responders address the incident, who will take that information and convert it into a news release, employee statement, or a statement for the community and key stakeholders?
• What tools are in place to quickly write a news release?
• Who should be involved in the approval process?
• Which means of communications will be used to distribute the written statement, i.e. a news release, the company website, a YouTube video, a Tweet to the media with a link to the statement on the website?
• As part of the crisis communications plan you must assign the task and methodology of sharing the statement to key team members.
• If you have to do media interviews, you must decide who will be the official media spokesperson.
• Once the spokesperson is assigned, another team member must help the spokesperson prepare.
• If the event has a long duration, your crisis communications plan should spell out the frequency of news conferences.
• In a major event, a Joint Information Command (JIC) may need to be established. (Watch our Master Class of Multi-Day Events)

 

And that is a small list of tasks that need to be assigned to specific team members. Trust me, the instructions need to be spelled out on a clear sunny day in a Crisis Communications Plan and not determined on an ad-hoc basis on your darkest day.

 

Fortunately for NACD members, SituationHub automates a large portion of these tasks:

https://situationhub.com/pricing/nacd/

 

SituationHub can:

• Help a team member gather the initial facts.
• It provides a one-button alert to the executive leadership team.
• A virtual Situation Room provides a protected space to share details.
• SituationHub automatically writes a ready-to-use news release based on the facts that were gathered.
• The review process can be done in the SituationHub software.
• One button can publish the finished statement to the web.

 

Making the crisis end requires skill. Communicating effectively during the crisis and at the end of the crisis is the start of recovery.