A Workflow for Organizing and Announcing Internal Information During a Crisis

Saturday, March 19, 2011
Collecting, sharing and announcing information is an extremely important function within a company. if the team in charge of information merely sends out the information it collects as is, there's no meaning in this team to exist. In other words, this team not only has to collect and send out information, it has to also filter, supplement and organize all the information it gets.

<Tasks>
0. Register Info for Possible Sharing, 1a. First Confirmation (Emergency), 1b. First Confirmation (Regular), 2a. Documentation (Emergency/New), 2a+. Documentation (Emergency/Existing), 2b. Documentation (Regular/New), 2b+. Documentation (Regular/Existing)


[Internal Announcement <IR Info>: "1a. First Confirmation (Emergency)" screen]



This workflow begins with the task of assorting the multifarious internal information and news. At the end, the information is documented by a public relations staff, in a easy-to-digest form, and published on the company's internal portal site (*). The main point for public relations is "how to convey the maximum amount of info with the headline." This information may be later used by public relations directors or company representatives at press conferences.

(*) Automatic post to blog, ECM, CMS, wiki, etc. Additional info of existing articles are added as comments.

Furthermore, the activities of public relations staff are all recorded into the system. This means, in perhaps a month, the company can calculate the average time it takes to document information and the maximum workload of one day. This will make it easier to determine how many additional staff members should be appointed in case of emergencies.

Also, it might be necessary to adjust the browsing authorization for each article. For example, it isn't a good idea to let all employees see IR updates at very early stages. Depending on the organization's scale, this workflow can optionally be considered a workflow that stays within the public relations team.

<Tasks>
0. Register Info for Possible Sharing, 1a. First Confirmation (Emergency), 1b. First Confirmation (Regular), 2a. Documentation (Emergency/New), 2a+. Documentation (Emergency/Existing), 2b. Documentation (Regular/New), 2b+. Documentation (Regular/Existing), 2a-ir. IR Documentation (Emergency), 2b-ir. IR Documentation (Regular), 3. IR Announcement/Portal Publishing