The crisis management plans for at least 40% of British businesses fail to address social media. New research shows that one third of communications directors feel unprepared for handling a crisis.

Nexus Communications’ research has shown that despite most businesses developing a crisis preparedness plan, they fall short in terms of functionality from a communications perspective. Comms directors also fear that their teams lack the experience to cope with serious problems. Despite the efforts of companies to enact plans, 20% of crisis management teams do not feel that any one person will have responsibility in a crisis. Leadership is one of the core tenets of crisis management, according to industry experts.

Richard Medley, MD of Nexus, says, “For something so intrinsically critical as reputation management, the world of crisis handling is riddled with conundrums. The more crisis becomes a reality, the less prepared we seem to be, and strangely the less ready to implement change we are, with 81% of respondents revealing changes don’t kick in as part of post-crisis learnings. Despite the propensity for issues to raise their head being enhanced significantly by the spread of social media, and the levels of concern corporate communications people frequently have about social media, the potential for using digital tools to assist in issues management has yet to take hold.”

Nexus has launched a crisis comms dashboard, the CORE system, to address the shortcomings most companies face in crisis preparedness.