The document discusses best practices for using an internal hospital intranet system for crisis communication. It provides an overview of creating an internal communication program and strategies for both preparing for and responding to crises. Specific features that a hospital intranet can offer to help with crisis management are outlined, including training resources, announcements, blogs, policies/procedures, alerts, and dedicated crisis pages. The document emphasizes the importance of having communication plans and teams established ahead of time.
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Best Practices in Crisis Communications Using Your Intranet
1. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
BEST PRACTICES in
Crisis Communication
Using your Hospital Intranet
Anne La Francis
Director of Sales and Marketing
HospitalPortal.net
Angela Novak
Client Services Director
H2M
2. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Agenda
Best Practices in Internal Communication
Creating an Internal Communication Program
Using an internal communication program for crisis management
Types of Healthcare Crises
Key tips for using your Intranet for Crisis Communication
Strategies for crisis communication preparation
Strategies for crisis communication response
How to better distribute and present crisis communication to staff
Tools for providing leadership with valuable staff feedback during the crisis
Post-crisis evaluation
3. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
HospitalPortal.net & H2M share a mutual client…
“We have relied on HospitalPortal.net to manage our intranet for many years. The “Central Line” as it is called is a
vital tool used for internal communications with our 900 employees and 80+ medical staff at Lake Region
Healthcare. Their easy-to-use interface helps us to keep intranet content fresh and relevant.”
______________________________________________________________________________________________
“Lake Region Healthcare has been a client of H2M since the fall of 2012 and have become an extension of our
marketing department. They treat our business as if it were their own, seeking to learn and understand our industry
and marketplace through in-person visits, extensive research and collaboration with our internal staff on projects
from media production to graphic design and PR to content development.”
Katie N. Johnson
VP, Marketing & Communications
and LRH Foundation
Lake Region HEALTHCARE
5. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Why internal communication?
Employee engagement
Brand ambassadorship
Work smarter, not harder
For every 2% increase in employee satisfaction,
there is a 1% increase in retention…
Your Employees Power Your Long-term ROI.
6. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Employee engagement
Proactive transparency builds trust and
respect between the health system and its
employees.
Regular internal communication unites
employees by breaking down the silos
and/or barriers between service lines,
departments and locations.
7. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Brand ambassadors
Your employees are your best brand
ambassadors.
Because your patients spend the majority of
their time interacting with your employees,
consistency and authenticity in messaging is
key.
Patients can never love your hospital
until your employees love it first.
8. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Work smarter, not harder
You are already developing strong external
content, so capture the messages in one
centralized intranet portal, making it easy for
employees to stay informed and efficient for you
to publish.
9. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
What’s the best approach?
An internal communication program that’s integrated within your overall marketing
communication department and that leverages multiple employee touchpoints.
Tactics include:
Become your own publisher
Tell employees first
Make it a two-way street
Maintain a regular schedule
Launch a brand ambassador program
10. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Become your own publisher
Manage all of your communication messages across
all channels with a comprehensive content calendar.
Channels should include all communication
touchpoints throughout the employee experience.
11. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Tell employees first
Healthcare employees are accustom
to being empowered; they are on the
frontlines of making vital decisions
everyday.
Healthcare employees should be the
first to know…and sometimes the
ONLY to know.
Daily Happenings
•Trainings
•Celebrations
•Menus
•Quality reports
•Census
information
•Births
Earned Media/PR
Updates
•Hospital
improvements
•New facility
upgrades
•Mergers or
acquisitions
•Community
programs
Leadership Updates
•Leadership blogs
•Leadership
academy
Social Feed
•Social network
updates
Crisis
Communication
•Emergency
preparation and
response
12. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Make it a two-way street
Successful internal communication offers
employees an opportunity to ask
questions, give ideas and participate in the
communication overall.
This should happen both through your
intranet and in-person.
13. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Maintain a regular schedule
Proactive communication on a regular schedule is
key.
Offer relevant, timely content and they will keep
coming back for more.
14. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Launch a Brand Ambassador Program
Empower though leaders and influential
employees to be your boots-on-the-ground
messengers.
Arm them with key talking points and Q&As.
Gather what they are hearings so leadership
gains frontline knowledge.
15. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Healthcare Crises - Be Prepared
School shooting, bomb threat,
flood…blizzards
Leverage the channels your
employees already trust
Red River Flood of 2009 – 100
year flood
When a robust internal communication program may mean the most
16. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Red River Flood of 2009
City was called to evacuate
Weeks of Incident Command
This is the time to execute and execute
well.
Images courtesy of documentingreality.com
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Your communication style
Timing should be consistent, frequent,
and aligned with staff schedules.
Information should be relevant,
concise and action-oriented.
Align your internal and external
messaging.
Tone should be confident, calm and direct.
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What is the main channel your organization
uses for crisis communication?
Email
External-facing website
Printed newsletters/material
Intranet
No consistent internal communication
POLL QUESTION #1
19. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Best Practices for Crisis Management
Have a Plan
Put a Team in Charge
Utilize Monitoring Tools
Manage Reputational Damage
Respond Quickly
20. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Have a Preparation Plan
Connect staff
Create awareness
Engage staff
Identify staff and leadership
Establish guidelines/standardize procedures
Offer proper training/education
Publish important documents
Keep staff accountable
21. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Have a Response Plan
Timely communication & alerts
Incident response team pages
Ongoing updates
Marketing/PR
Reputation management
Social & brand ambassadorship
Staff and resource scheduling
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How-to Resources
Action Sheets
Incident Chain of Command
Track, monitor and report on response actions
Proactive planning throughout crisis
Management dashboards
Have a Response Plan cont’d
23. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Put a Team in Charge
Designate a team/candidate to be the “speaker” or
the voice
Identify the key stakeholders that should participate
and outline their roles and responsibilities for the
communication preparation and response
Determine primary contact person for govt.
agencies/organizations and the first response
personnel for each department
24. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Utilize Crisis Monitoring Tools
Census Boards for monitoring hospital capacity
Vulnerability analysis charts
Quick links to emergency centers (FEMA, CDC) and
other local hospitals
Weather alerts via RSS feeds from local resources,
media alerts and monitoring tool data
Real-time monitoring
Read acknowledgements/Notice of
acceptance
25. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Manage Reputational Damage
Train staff ahead of time
Monitor media in real-time
Brandwatch
Cision
Critical Mention
Metro Monitor
Build Trust
Be Honest
Don’t Argue with Commenters
Take a Human Approach
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Respond Quickly
Engage chain of command
Alert Employees First
Keep Employees Constantly Informed
Share intranet links to crisis
operational plan
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Post-Crisis Evaluation Plan
Outline challenges, successes and lessons learned
Identify actions that prevented successful execution during any point in response and
crisis management plan
Amend or revise crisis messaging or crisis policies and procedures if needed
Evaluate short and long term goals
Prepare debriefing reports and metrics on success of response
Monitor reputational exposure and develop remediation plan if needed
Refine crisis communication strategy and crisis operational plan if needed
28. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Intranet
Features to
help with
Crisis
Management
Training/educational resources
Announcements (News, Scrollers, Image Slideshows)
Blogs
Contact & Emergency Vendor directories
Integrated Policies & Procedures
Mass notifications/alerts
Chain of commands lists
Emergency codes
Dedicated pages to crisis topic
Crisis Forums
Ticket management
Project teams real-time Chat
29. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Training/Educational Resources
Training videos
Training modules for crises for new hires
Relevant educational resources on
crisis topics
Class registration for crisis
management classes
RSS Feeds from emergency resource
centers
Links to LMS providers and ongoing access
to crisis education
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Policies and Procedures
All content becomes searchable
Search by policy keyword, title, number
Job action sheets
Facility maps
Read acks on all policy documents
newly updated or revised
Notice of acceptance feature to track
whether or not an authenticated
employee has reviewed a document
31. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Create images ahead of time for certain
types of crises
Keeps the information front and center
and highly noticeable
Can be hyperlinked to a emergency page
with additional information on the crisis
Announcements
Home Page Slideshow/Image Gallery
32. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Devoted section to the most timely crisis updates
Images speak louder than words sometimes – easily add
images to your crisis communications
Subscription based news – asking staff to follow stories if
potential crisis is on the rise
Enable or disable comments for the most optimal
engagement about the crisis
Ability to preset these to go live immediately and expire
on a set date
Announcements
Hot News Section
33. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Can be used for any type of mass
messaging
Managing reputational publicity
Often used as a crisis alert for:
Fires
Evacuations
System Outages
Local community crises
Announcements
Emergency Scroller Mechanism
34. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Collaborate, learn, and use 2-way communication
during a crisis
Enable comments to engage staff
Access to past archived posts
Manage PR messages by sending out facts what the
hospital is doing about it
Examples
Departmental, Personal, Leadership/CEO
Adding a connection
Vlog
Leadership Blogs
35. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Crisis Forums
Staff Forums dedicated to a
specific crisis
All content becomes searchable
Categorize by Crisis Topic
Departmental Forums
Project collaboration
Other forum examples
Hospital Wikis
Classifieds
Crisis team projects
Ride sharing coordination
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Crisis Dedicated Pages
General emergency pages
Dedicated crisis specific pages
(Ebola)
Crisis staff team project
collaboration pages
Quick links and resources
Latest news updates
Submit a ticket request
Emergency contacts
3rd party iFrame content from
emergency resources (CDC)
37. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
Crisis Management Tools
Incident Command
System
Emergency Action Wizard
Emergency Codes
Can be placed on any
pages
Many clients create as
hidden component and go
live only during the
emergency
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Forms & Workflows
Over 100+ forms available in library
Easy to custom create forms ahead of time for
certain crises
Incident reporting forms
Ask crisis management
Time off request
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Crisis Response Tickets
Help desk ticket tracking
Crisis response ticket management
for completing tasks associated with
the crisis
Facility tickets for maintenance due
to crisis
Log all issues for appropriate staff to
take action
Email reminders
Can pre-create crisis categories
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Restricted View Pages
Board & Physician Pages
Crisis Meeting packets, notes and
archives
Committee lists
Calendars
Crisis Dashboards
Links to relevant crisis management
resources
On call schedule(s)
News and announcements
42. Copyrights HospitalPortal.net 2016. All rights reserved.
THANK YOU!
Anne La Francis
HospitalPortal.net
Director of Sales and Marketing
ALaFrancis@HospitalPortal.net
Angela Novak
H2M
Client Services Director
angela@h2m.biz