Crisis Management Plan

In our last class we discussed all aspects of a crisis management plan. The first step is assembling a crisis management team. This team includes members of your company such as the company CEO, public relations specialist, lawyer, and human resources. The second test is to activate the crisis management team and make all of your employees aware of them. This can be through an e-mail, poster, flyer, or even to just run around and tell everyone. In your notice you should include instructions for your employees to follow should a crisis take place, and a backup plan. This leads to the crisis policies established. If it is a private crisis your employees need to know to keep quiet and not discuss these issues with the press. At no point should a random employee address the press on a company issue, it should always be a person determined by the crisis management team. After the policies are formed and distributed the crisis management team should create a crisis decision tree. This tree will include detailed steps on what individuals and the company will do if a crisis should happen. After the tree is made a spokesperson should be elected to address the media. This person should be aware of all the insides and out of the company crisis, and outside news so they can be knowledgeable and expect the unexpected when being asked questions from the press. A final aspect of a crisis management plan is to create a crisis communications checklist. This will help the team make sure they are not missing anything to the plan when a crisis takes place and it can be handled in the best possible way.
Universal Music Group can prevent any crisis from taking place by following these steps and implementing a crisis management plan. If a crisis were to take place then it can be handled right away to the best of UMGs ability. The checklist will make sure that nothing is missed and everything has been done in their power. An example of a potential crisis that can take place is artist budgets slowly decreasing and finally coming to a standstill. Because less people are purchasing CDs artists are relying more and more on other sources to generate revenue such as advertising. This would be a good time to implement a crisis management plan in case they no longer have a budget for artists. The crisis management plan will outline the actions they will take in order to keep their artists signed to their label and keep them happy making money.