Today, many workplaces have fully or partially incorporated the remote culture we became accustomed to during the pandemic. The major advantage has been a better work-life balance, but at the top of the list of negative aspects, inadequate internal communication often takes precedence.
The line between private and work life has blurred. We have the modern office in our pockets and are constantly moving between work and personal activities. Information flow has increased immensely, and much of the workday now occurs through a mobile phone or computer from various locations. Most meetings occur digitally, and internal and external communication is mixed in different channels, such as phone calls, emails, SMS, Teams, WhatsApp, Slack, or any other popular tool.
We speak with hundreds of new organizations every week, and when we ask them how they communicate internally, emails, Teams, or Slack are often mentioned. When we ask: how do you handle a crisis situation? Or when something very important happens? For example, an accident, threat/violence, IT disruption, or a serious societal event?
That’s when it usually goes quiet. The person becomes thoughtful and says, “we use the same tools.” It quickly becomes apparent that during a serious incident, it would be almost impossible to reach the right people with critical information. Recipients are likely in a digital meeting with their phones on silent, the switchboard blocked, or the information gets lost in the constant noise of notifications from mobile and computer.
The sense of recognition is very high when people describe the enormous daily amount of notifications from emails, SMS, Teams meetings, WhatsApp messages from friends or children’s sports threads, LinkedIn posts that HR wants to be liked, pings from various Slack channels, and everything topped with shoutouts, emojis, and GIFs.
After some discussion, the conclusion is usually that “we cannot actually ensure that we reach the right people with the right information at the right time. And we actually don’t know where all our colleagues are during the day if something serious were to happen in our building or in society.”
Cosafe is a Swedish Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tech company in the safety field that helps businesses, government agencies, municipalities, and schools keep their employees safe and informed. Together with security experts from hundreds of clients, we have developed a user-friendly alarm app that facilitates critical communication and secures workplaces for hundreds of thousands of users.
In this article, we list five reasons why common communication channels fail as effective tools in a serious event, incident, or crisis. We hope you find some useful tips and increase your awareness, regardless of the tool you use to keep employees safe and informed.
1. The volume of notifications per day creates an impenetrable noise.
We have all experienced it – the constant stream of notifications from emails, Teams, Slack, and WhatsApp. When it pings up to 50 times, it creates a noise that makes it difficult to distinguish the important messages from the rest of the flow. Important information does not always reach through the mobile’s silent mode, resulting in crucial information passing unnoticed during meetings or quiet moments. For Slack users, the absence of read receipts creates a significant challenge where one is not sure if their message reached the right person in time.
TIPS: To manage the increasing noise of notifications and ensure that vital information does not go unnoticed, here is a useful tip: Create a “Notification Break” routine, determine specific times during the day when you take a short break to go through your messages. Set your device to “silent mode” to avoid interruptions. Use communication tools that allow important messages to pass through silent modes and offer read confirmations. By following this routine, you can prioritize important messages and improve productivity while reducing notification noise.
2. Time-consuming and difficult to escalate an issue.
When an incident occurs, you need to inform many people quickly, and new participants may need to go through the history. However, in encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp, you cannot share history with newly added participants, preventing you from quickly sharing critical information with new individuals. Outdated contact lists and phone numbers also complicate effective communication during crises. Additionally, during major societal disruptions, common communication methods like SMS and phone calls may not go through due to mobile network congestion, allowing only Wi-Fi data communication, significantly limiting the ability to communicate effectively during critical situations.
TIPS: Use a dedicated communication platform for critical information and emergencies.
By having a specialized platform for incidents and emergencies, you can enhance the efficiency of incident management and rapidly reach the right people when it is truly necessary, likely reducing harmful consequences.
3. Lack of redundancy in the event of a cyberattack.
Cyberattacks are a very real threat for many businesses today. In this article, you can read more about how to prepare. One of the first actions during a cyberattack is usually to shut down the network, which can hinder crisis communication in the regular communication tool and the ability to share action plans stored on the server. Relying on a single communication tool can be risky. If that channel goes down for any reason, you may miss important information during a critical situation.
TIPS: Have two effective communication channels and ensure you have a plan to handle cyberattacks.
By having two reliable communication channels and ensuring that you have a plan to manage cyberattacks, you can enhance your organization’s ability to respond quickly and effectively in critical situations, even if one system goes down.
4. Issues with Personal Data Management and GDPR.
For anyone affected by GDPR, the choice of tools is further complicated. One wants to avoid third-country transfers of personal data as much as possible, and some organizations allow no transfer at all. The major players like Google, Meta, and Microsoft offer data storage within the EU for an additional cost, but third-country transfers may still be relevant due to ownership and subcontracting. The cessation of Privacy Shield in Schrems II has made it difficult for many organizations, but a ray of hope is the new EU-US Data Protection Framework recently introduced.
TIPS: Explore GDPR-compliant alternatives.
To handle personal data and comply with GDPR requirements, consider using tools and services that offer secure data management within the EU. Explore GDPR-compliant options that do not require third-country transfers of personal data. This may involve evaluating lesser-known providers and the latest guidelines like EU-US DPF to find a solution that meets your needs without compromising data protection.
5. Lack of preparedness and automation.
Those who experience or discover an incident and raise an alarm in the company chat must also quickly access the current action plan to know how to act. Roles, responsibilities, and tasks need to be delegated, confidential communication should be handled within the crisis management team, while situational awareness and verified information should be disseminated to everyone.
When the entire incident is finally over, the course of events needs to be analyzed in a post-mortem or post-action report. It is essential that everything is automatically logged so that a report can be sent internally, to external stakeholders, and authorities.
With technical tools, you can plan, predefine, and automate essential workflows for crisis communication in advance, saving invaluable time in critical situations that can be used to minimize the consequences of the incident.
TIPS: To increase efficiency and reduce the time required to handle an incident, consider using technical tools to automate essential workflows related to crisis communication. Create predefined processes that include assigning roles, delegating responsibilities, ensuring confidentiality, and distributing information. By automating these steps, you can save invaluable time in critical situations and quickly take action to minimize the consequences of the incident. Additionally, ensure that everything is logged automatically to facilitate analysis afterwards and reporting to internal and external stakeholders.
Do you agree?
For us, it is a given to keep crisis communication separate from everyday communication. Today, we see a great interest in the Cosafe alarm app for many reasons, but the problems we list above are common causes.
Some lessons from our customers include:
- A notification about a serious event must cut through the daily noise and mobile’s silent mode.
- The communication channel for critical information should be separated (redundant) from the regular channel, such as email or Slack, in case the system encounters problems.
- All data storage should be within the EU and at multiple geographical locations for maximum security and availability.
Effectively alerting, managing, and preventing critical events is essential for crisis management in an organization. Therefore, it is crucial to be able to easily alert the right people with just a press of a button, automatically receive crisis plans and checklists, and generate reports for follow-up without requiring many hours of administration.