The Elephant in the Org
The "Elephant in the Org" podcast is a daring dive into the unspoken challenges and opportunities in organizational development, particularly in the realm of employee experience. Hosted by the team at The Fearless PX, we tackle the "elephants" in the room—those taboo or ignored topics—that are critical for creating psychologically safe and highly effective workplaces.
The Elephant in the Org
Crisis, Chaos, and Comms: Alison Arnot on Turning Panic Into Trust
When crisis hits, clarity collapses — and HR is often left holding the mic.
In this episode, Marion, Danny, and Cacha sit down with Alison Arnot, award-winning consultant, trainer, and author of Internal Communication in Times of Crisis: How to Secure Employee Trust, Support, and Advocacy in Crisis Situations. From her early-career baptism during the 2007 Glasgow Airport terror attack to decades guiding organizations through chaos, Alison shares what really happens when comms go quiet and people are left to fill in the blanks.
She introduces her Seven S’s Framework — Surviving, Supporting, Sense-making, Stabilizing, Stimulating, Sustaining, and Strengthening — and explains how it helps teams move from panic to trust. Together, we explore how HR often becomes the crisis communications department by default, what psychological safety looks like when everything is on fire, and why connection—not control—is the cornerstone of any credible response.
🎧 Expect stories, strategies, and a few uncomfortable truths about leadership, silence, layoffs, and the human side of crisis.
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🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024.
Get ready for even more fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.
🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson
⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.
Here’s the thing about crisis: nobody puts it in your job description, but sooner or later, HR gets handed the mic. Suddenly, you’re expected to be the comms team, the therapist, and the cleanup crew — all before lunch.
Our guest today knows that pressure better than almost anyone. Alison Arnot is a crisis communications expert, consultant, trainer, and now author of the book Internal Communication in Times of Crisis. Her work is all about one deceptively simple but often forgotten truth: in any crisis, you have to think human first.
Alison’s been in the thick of it — from terror attacks to corporate meltdowns, from universities to airports, she’s seen how organizations stumble, and more importantly, how they recover stronger when they actually put people at the center.
first crossed at Scottish Airports and they both found themselves on the front lines of crisis comms and crisis operations.
So buckle up — today we’re diving into Crisis, Chaos, and Comms with Alison Arnot, and exploring how to turn panic into trust when everything’s going sideways.
This is the Elephant in the Org.
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Danny Gluch: Welcome back to The Elephant in the Org, everyone. I'm Danny Glutch, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Marion Anderson.
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Marion: Me first! Hello!
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Danny Gluch: And Kashadora.
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Cacha Dora: Hello!
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Marion: See, that throws it off every time.
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Cacha Dora: It does! It.
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Marion: Did you get a sing-songy hello? Wouldn't you do that, Danny?
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Danny Gluch: You know what? We're here, and we're happy to be here, and that's what's hard. Summer's over, I'm out of my groove, we'll figure it out.
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Marion: summer's over? Are you sure?
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Danny Gluch: No, it's like a million degrees in California right now. I am sweating, and it's 6 AM.
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Marion: Oh, it's… it's been, like, 102, but index, not 115, because of the humidity here. It's, like, sweaty.
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Cacha Dora: Yeah, we're like.
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Marion: to you.
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Cacha Dora: mid-90s right now. Well, not right now, but in, like, a very short window of time.
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Marion: Well, I'm pretty sure.
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Danny Gluch: Well, that was our….
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Marion: I was going to say, I'm pretty sure it's not indexing 115 in Scotland right now.
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Danny Gluch: No, it's not. And that's the end of our weather section. We're testing that one out. Give us feedback in the comments if you liked our weather chat. But today's actual elephant in the org is crisis communications.
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Danny Gluch: And, boy howdy, it sometimes falls on HR, it's always very complicated. So we have Allison Arnett on as a crisis communications expert. Allison, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience?
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Alison Arnot: Hello, it's lovely to be here. Yes, I'm Alison.
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Alison Arnot: I am a consultant, I'm a trainer, and I'm an author in PR, internal communications, and my specific interest is internal crisis communications, which is what we're going to be talking about today.
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Alison Arnot: I've just recently written a book on this subject, and it's a real passion for me, so I'm really, really happy to be here to talk to you guys.
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Marion: Yeah, we're happy to have you here, and I may or may not be in this book.
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Alison Arnot: Marion is definitely in this picture. She's a wonderful contributor.
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Alison Arnot: We've known each other for many years, and I've always really valued her advice and support, so of course she is in the book.
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Marion: Likewise. And not only have we been colleagues for, you know, we were colleagues back in the day, which we'll touch on today, but we've been besties for years, drinking buddies for years, got into more mischief, but that's a story for another day.
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Marion: Definitely.
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Marion: So, let's go back then. So, we met way back in the, kind of, like, early 2000s, when we both worked for Scottish Airports.
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Alison Arnot: That's right.
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Marion: Back in the day? Back in the day.
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Alison Arnot: And it was lots of fun, wasn't it?
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Marion: It was a lot of fun. It was hard work, and it was
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Marion: you know, it's a very interesting place to spend time in your career, working in airports, regardless of whether it's airline, or actually with the airport, airside, you know, front of house, whatever that might be. But it's always on the go.
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Marion: there's always something happening. It's very dynamic. It's very exciting, very interesting. You know, I think you get a lot of experiences and things that you would never really, kind of, experience outside of that.
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Marion: But I think because the sort of seminal moment for us was back in, 2007.
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Alison Arnot: At the end of, June.
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Marion: There was, an incident at Glasgow Airport, and…
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Marion: that's kind of where this all really kicked off for you? Yeah, definitely.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah, absolutely. There was a… there was a terror attack at Glasgow Airport, and… and I was, the person from the comms team who… who responded.
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Alison Arnot: by accident more than by design, to be honest with you. I was fairly early in my career at that point, but I was part of the communications on-call team.
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Alison Arnot: It was a Saturday afternoon, and as often happens with crisis, the plans didn't go exactly as we had intended them to, so actually someone else from the team was on call.
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Alison Arnot: for the media that day. But he was at a barbecue.
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Alison Arnot: I was in the house, I was just pottering around the house, I heard the pager go off, and I contacted my colleague to ask if I could help, because I could see so many calls were coming through. It was clearly
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Alison Arnot: an unusual situation. He told me that there was a problem at the airport, he didn't know it was a terror attack at that point, and I said, listen, hey, it's okay, you enjoy the barbecue, I'm gonna pop along for, like, half an hour, I'll sort it out for you, and, and then we can both go on with our day.
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Alison Arnot: Obviously, like, by 11pm that evening, I was still there, finally handing
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Alison Arnot: handing over the reins to him, but that's, that's often what happens in a crisis. It's not necessarily the timetable or the plan that you put in place, because by their very nature.
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Alison Arnot: crisis or unexpected. But yeah, that was my first big experience, and from there, I kind of developed a bit of a passion in
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Alison Arnot: Helping people through crisis, supporting colleagues through crisis.
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Alison Arnot: And I've experienced lots of different situations now,
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Alison Arnot: almost 20 years later, which I'm, you know.
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Marion: I'm happy to chat.
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Alison Arnot: Right.
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Marion: Yeah, gosh, it's, it's just… it's bringing me back. I remember that, that same thing. I had to hot-foot it to Edinburgh, and, I was there for 72 hours straight, so it was wild. It was wild. But,
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Marion: But yeah, it's….
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Danny Gluch: Well, what were some… Yeah, no, I, I… what was your path in…
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Danny Gluch: going from that experience to writing this book, to… Also, you have a book. Tell us a little bit about the book, and how this experience transitioned into, you know, your expertise and you coming out with this book.
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Alison Arnot: Sure, absolutely. Okay, so, yeah, so I worked at the airport, and that wasn't the only crisis at the airport. You won't be surprised to know, obviously, in the aviation industry, it's, you know, an industry where there is risk, and there are issues to deal with.
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Alison Arnot: …
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Alison Arnot: I moved from there into, the higher education sector. I went to work for a university, and again, like any organization with a really large community of human beings, you have problems, you have challenges, you have issues.
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Alison Arnot: I dealt with numerous crises there, and I began to realize that, actually.
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Alison Arnot: There is a huge, impact on…
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Alison Arnot: the human beings in the organization when a crisis occurs, our focus is often on the media, the press release, you know, let's hold the press conference, let's get the press statement ready, and we forget that actually it's the people inside the organization who are holding it together. And I became really passionate about that. Glasgow Airport was an example of really good practice when,
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Alison Arnot: We were managing a crisis and communicating with people, and then as I moved through my career.
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Alison Arnot: through the university sector, and eventually I began consulting and training, and I've been doing that for 12 years, I began to see, actually, the leaders have a huge impact on how well this goes, and the communication has a huge impact. So when it's done well, actually, we can come through together, and we can sometimes strengthen the organization.
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Alison Arnot: We can come out of crisis stronger.
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Alison Arnot: In other times, we can actually really cause damage, because we're not dealing with people properly, we're not communicating properly, we're potentially hindering or slowing process and progress because we're not taking care of the human needs inside the organization.
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Alison Arnot: At worst.
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Alison Arnot: we're potentially bouncing the organization into a whole new crisis altogether, because we're not meeting the human needs. So that became my passion.
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Alison Arnot: The book is based on training that I deliver. It's called Internal Communication in Times of Crisis, How to Secure Employee Trust, Support, and Advocacy in Crisis Situations, and it's really, …
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Alison Arnot: A call to put the humans in the organization at the center of management thinking, leadership thinking, when we are delivering a crisis response.
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Marion: Yeah, and… and I think that… That, in itself.
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Marion: It's such a fundamental part of leadership, regardless of whether it's, you know, crisis comms, general internal comms.
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Marion: just even day-to-day stuff. You know, one of the biggest challenges that we see, through employee sentiment
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Marion: Well, there's three things that always come back to me, and I think that we call this out in the book. But leadership, transparency, and trust. You know, if leaders can't be transparent, they don't build trust. And so, when stuff like this happens, when the proverbial shit's hitting the fan.
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Marion: Employees are looking to that leader for
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Marion: comfort, for direction, for what's going on, mum, dad, what's happening? You know, and….
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Alison Arnot: Lovely.
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Marion: If that trust isn't already established, and if that transparency hasn't been there, and continues not to be there through the crisis.
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Marion: The sustained damage that you talk about is absolutely, you know.
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Cacha Dora: it's….
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Marion: inescapable. And that then feeds into the psychological safety. You know, if employees don't feel psychologically safe when they see something maybe that could be a risk, or they need to speak up, or give feedback, or, you know, dissent, or anything like that, if that's not there, again, that's only going to exacerbate the situation.
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Marion: And then, you know, we talk a lot about manager capability and enablement, and I think that
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Marion: One of the most fundamental skills that is overlooked for most leadership levels, but certainly the more junior end of that, is how to speak to your employees.
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Marion: You know, in these types of situations, not necessarily just crisis, but when you think about
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Marion: Even on a one-on-one, an employee comes to you and something terrible's happening in their life.
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Marion: Maybe there's an illness, or a death, or whatever.
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Marion: that ability to actively act with empathy, I think, is something that takes years of practice for many, and if that skill hasn't been developed, then, again, can continue to add to the lack of trust, transparency, sex, safety, all of that. So, like, what you're talking about is so critical.
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Danny Gluch: In the entire employee journey, but so much more in these types of situations.
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Cacha Dora: Yeah, and it's not something that people really get training in, right? Like, you're… most people don't go into a manager role, like, oh, okay, I'm going through my career progression, I'm gonna get promoted, and I'm gonna get… and I'm gonna start moving up, and at no point is someone like, hey, let's talk about crisis, and you're like, why would I do that? Like, that just doesn't make any sense in your day-to-day.
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Cacha Dora: But it is something that inevitably happens, right? Like, legislature gets passed that people find to be upsetting and traumatizing. Actual terror attacks can happen. Like, there's so many things that happen in our world that.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Cacha Dora: generate a crisis, and then you have the personal side of things. And I think when we're looking at it through the lens of an organization, Marian, much to your point, if
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Cacha Dora: The organization's gonna immediately look to the executive leadership team.
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Cacha Dora: That's the first place that you instinctively go, mentally. And…
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Cacha Dora: If that leadership team is quiet, That silence, right?
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Cacha Dora: that suddenly is a breeding ground for things. And while it takes time to cultivate that message, and you want to have a well-thought-out message, which I'm so excited to get to hear more from you about.
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Cacha Dora: that silence, you know, it's always like the culture happens in a vacuum, right? Like, it'll… something will take its place no matter what.
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Cacha Dora: And so, getting to really think about how we approach the human component of our organizations.
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Cacha Dora: I think can be empowering to leadership teams in times of crisis, as opposed to being so scary, let's ignore it.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah, absolutely.
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Danny Gluch: Yeah, and one of the things that I love is that you've given a very strategic approach to this, and very human, human-centered, human-focused.
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Danny Gluch: And, man, Marion, when you were talking about the, you know, the… whether employees or people, like, going, mom, dad, help, like, I got a little choked up because it's…
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Danny Gluch: Allison, when you talk about these, you know, the first stage in your framework for handling this is surviving.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: And, like, we go into the fight or flight, and we go back to our, like, most instinctual brains, and we are looking for mom and dad. We are saying, someone…
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Danny Gluch: help us. Or, you know, maybe we're… we're taking on a maternal or paternal role, and we're like, I need to help my people. Like, it's… no one knows how they're gonna act. We all think we act a certain way. No one really knows.
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Alison Arnot: But I love that… that you….
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Danny Gluch: you know, I imagine you didn't come up with this on your own, you consulted people, you learned a lot, because I read this framework that you call the seven S's, and I'm just like…
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Danny Gluch: it's both, like, insightful and, like, eye-opening and, like, whoa, I didn't think of it, like, in this particular order. But then…
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Danny Gluch: also, like, when you look at it as a whole, you're like, wow, that just makes so much sense. That's what people, any person needs. This isn't, like, a cultural, specific thing. It seems like humans….
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: these are the stages that they need to progress through, you know, and you can't get to one until you're… you've really done the other. Yeah. Tell me more about that. Tell me what the seven S's are, and how you came about them, and….
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Alison Arnot: Sure, sure. Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have worked now in many, many different types of crises.
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Alison Arnot: You know, whether it is an attack, whether it's a malfunction, whether it's an issue of management misconduct, management misbehavior, what I observed is that there are, there are certain needs that we see all the time.
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Alison Arnot: And what I also observed is that often leaders and managers want to just skip some of the needs. They want to jump to the end. They want to fix the organization without thinking about the people.
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Alison Arnot: So I developed this framework to help people recognize there are both human needs and there are organisational needs in times of crisis. The human needs come first.
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Alison Arnot: But once we've met them, for sure, we can go on and we can support the organisational needs, and we can come out stronger. So there are 3 human needs, 4 organizational needs. …
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Alison Arnot: I'll run through them very quickly, and then I'll talk about them in more detail if you want, but the human needs are surviving, as you said, supporting, and sense-making, and once we've met those needs, we can then go on to the organisational needs of stabilizing.
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Alison Arnot: stimulating, sustaining, and strengthening. So if we go through the whole process, we can take people on this journey and help the organization recover from the crisis and emerge stronger.
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Alison Arnot: But we need to start with the human needs. So in the first instance… sorry, Danny.
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Danny Gluch: Oh, I was gonna say, is the skipping? You mentioned organizations, leaders, like, there's an instinct sometimes to try to skip ahead. Is the skipping exactly over the human needs, and they just.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah! Surprise, surprise! Yeah, of course, they want to go straight into stabilizing.
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Alison Arnot: And then strengthening. You know, it's not even that they skip all the human needs and focus only on the organisational needs. Sometimes they don't even think about the organizational needs, but we need to go through them in order. So, surviving is simply about protecting people from harm, exactly as you guys have already expressed. It's about…
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Alison Arnot: Making sure that people are safe.
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Alison Arnot: Making sure the environment's safe, making sure the organization is safe. Only when you have met those surviving needs
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Alison Arnot: Can we move on to supporting needs? How do we practically and psychologically support people so that they can begin to re-function in this crisis? And that could be something as simple as, am I getting paid? When am I getting paid in some types of crisis?
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Alison Arnot: to things like, I need some really significant psychological support here. So it's different in different.
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Danny Gluch: types.
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Alison Arnot: crisis. Very closely on the back of that, we have sense-making, and sense-making is critical. It's the one that most people misunderstand and skip over, because it's that moment of, what is happening here?
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Alison Arnot: And…
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Alison Arnot: If you've experienced a crisis yourself at work or in life, you'll know when something really confusing and frightening happens, you turn it over in your head constantly. You want to talk about it, you want to seek out information, you look for different sources of information, you look for people who want to talk with you about that subject.
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Alison Arnot: And often organisations think one email's enough.
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Alison Arnot: Well, it's not, because when you have people scrabbling for information, scrabbling to make sense of what's happening, they need to talk with you, they need to ask you questions, they need to seek out information, and to Cash's point, if there's no information coming from the organization.
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Alison Arnot: it doesn't mean they're not gonna do anything, it means they're gonna go elsewhere. And that's where you have the danger of misinformation, disinformation, people switching off, people turning to little tribes, and the problems start to brew. So those are the three human needs.
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Marion: Yeah, you only need to look at blind after a layoff to, you know, to really kind of see that play out, or any other of those kind of, like, anonymous sites, right, where employees are venting. You know, there was something that
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Marion: that really was screaming in my head as you were talking, Alison, you know.
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Marion: if I think about… by the way, obviously, apart from the fact that I'm in the book, I've been telling lots of HR practitioners to read this book, not because I'm in it, but because…
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Marion: in smaller organizations, you know, like, you've worked typically… you consult, but you've worked typically in larger scale organisations, enterprise, right? But in smaller organizations, you don't have, a comms, you certainly probably don't have internal comms, right? Yeah.
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Marion: A lot of it falls on the junk drawer of the organization, which is the people leader. And, you know, just like many other things in HR, we're not trained in comms, we're not trained in this stuff.
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Marion: So, like, you know, like everything else, or not everything else, but a lot of things that we have to do, we have to learn on the fly, and we have to wing it a lot, right? And I think that…
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Marion: That's where a lot of things can really go pear-shaped.
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Marion: Because without that, sort of fundamental understanding that you've shared through that model.
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Marion: Again, HR practitioners can do the same thing and try to jump to the end and not the beginning, you know, and miss out those critical steps. But what was really kind of banging around in my head as you were saying that is layoffs. Now.
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Marion: we know, and I don't know what's happening at home right now, but certainly in the US, and certainly in tech, layoffs are…
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Marion: There's been a lot this year.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Marion: And when there's, you know, at-scale layoffs, reductions in force.
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Marion: it's crisis. It's exactly the same thing, you know. One day some… your friend, your work… your work wife might be there, the next day she's gone, right?
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Marion: and you're trying to make sense of it, and you're trying to… you're trying to, like, work through what is happening, and if your company is not following that model and communicating in that way, it's exactly the same thing. You know, and… and I've seen that
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Marion: so many times over the years where companies will go through a round of layoffs. They're trying to really play it down, because obviously they don't want to cause mass hysteria, they don't want to impact shareholder price, let's face it. …
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Marion: And they'll just kind of, like, maybe sort of lightly talk about it in an email, and then it's like, okay, nothing to see here, everyone move on.
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Marion: and… So many employees are left behind, still stuck.
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Marion: In the sense-making stage, because they've not had a chance to work through it, whereas the people who have probably
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Marion: you know, led the reduction in force. Well, they've been working on this for weeks, right? There's been a lot happening in the background, so they've had time to process, whereas those who have been impacted or indirectly impacted
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Marion: Haven't heard that.
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Cacha Dora: Absolutely. Yeah, that experience of, like, if you think about, like, you know, like, the bridges change model, just, like, I'm getting nerdy for a second, but, like, you know, that emotional response, everyone's at a different stage.
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Marion: Yeah.
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Cacha Dora: And sometimes people have to move quickly through those stages because they're supporting their teams, and sometimes those people are gonna stay stuck, like Mary and you were talking about. And the hardest thing to do is get people out of the beginning and into the rest of that flow.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Cacha Dora: That's so hard.
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Alison Arnot: You know, when you talk about change models and so on, a lot of my understanding of this subject and a lot of the inspiration that I got actually came from change communication and change models and kind of psychological understanding of how people respond
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Alison Arnot: To change, because that is an issue that is much better academically understood
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Alison Arnot: than internal crisis communication, but they share a lot of commonality, and you're absolutely right. When we talk about the change curve, we can't push people through the change curve. We can help them through it.
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Danny Gluch: It's exactly the same with crisis. We can't push people through a crisis.
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Alison Arnot: You push them through, and what you will get is resistance. So you have to support, help, enable them to do that, and to do that, you need to recognize everyone is different.
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Alison Arnot: Everyone has a slightly different experience of this situation. Some people will be very directly affected, others will be witnesses.
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Alison Arnot: Others will have a different trauma entirely that reappears and affects how they're feeling in that moment. So we need to understand all of the people in the organization and recognize there is no template, there is no one-size-fits-all.
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Alison Arnot: You know, often I see, blogs. Crisis comms is kind of a popular thing to blog about, and you often see people blogging about it on a very superficial level, and they'll see a case study, and they'll say, this is the new way forward, this is the new playbook for crisis, and so on.
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Alison Arnot: And more often than not, it's not. That was one example that worked well in one situation. To work well consistently, we need to be human, and we need to look at the unique needs of the crisis.
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Alison Arnot: The unique needs of the culture, the unique needs of the community, the people in the organization, and tailor something really specifically to fit them, and recognize, yes, some crisis, it will happen 24 hours later, we'll be back to normal, and everyone can cheer and say, that was amazing.
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Alison Arnot: There are others where the pain lasts for generations.
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Alison Arnot: And genuinely lasts for generations, when there has been a huge traumatic event, perhaps with fatalities, perhaps where the organization has not behaved in a human way, has not recognised the pain, has not allowed people to grieve or face their trauma properly, people will be stuck at the beginning of that curve
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Alison Arnot: For years, so we need to understand that.
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Marion: Yeah, something I wanted to drill down into again with you is the sense-making. You were talking about if there isn't this….
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Danny Gluch: messaging that this, …
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Danny Gluch: You know, a lot of my research was in moral psychology and, like, how emotions are even made. And what you were talking about, where it's left to the individuals or little tribes, it's… it was such an interesting idea of culture.
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Danny Gluch: And you've mentioned before, I don't know if it was on the podcast or when we were offline, of these are actual moments where cultures and communities, organizations can be strengthened, can actually.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: stronger. And it's also one of the times when, if people are left to do their own sort of sense-making, where they're feeling their bodies, their minds are racing, it's a lot of emotions that are either very new, experiences that are new, or at an intensity level that's completely foreign to them.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: Don't have the messaging to help them start to make sense of what they're feeling and what they're experiencing.
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Danny Gluch: You really do get this, like, tribal, disjointed, very awkward, and then where you can't… it's difficult to move forward from there.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: Talk a little bit about, you know, I think we understand that, you know, in the survival mode, it should be rapid, it should be clear, it should be directive. I think people, you know, they can study militaries on how to do stuff like that very well.
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Alison Arnot: Exactly, yeah.
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Danny Gluch: supporting, I think we have a good idea of what it means to be supportive, and, you know, we're big advocates for psychological safety. But the sense-making, I think, is really unique. I've not seen this very often before.
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Cacha Dora: Yeah.
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Danny Gluch: What a great….
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Cacha Dora: Naming to give.
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Danny Gluch: Yeah, and I get a sense you have a really great insight into what exactly this is doing, and how to do it well as a communications team.
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Alison Arnot: Sure, sure. Well, I can't take, credit for the name sense-making. It's actually something that's been around
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Alison Arnot: For years, a concept that's been around since the kind of 1980s, but it never really got much understanding or much of a platform until recently.
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Alison Arnot: The world that we're living in, obviously is more complex than it has ever been before, it's more fractured, and people have started talking about sense-making in organizations again. So that was where I was inspired by, and also by what I've observed in lots of different crises.
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Alison Arnot: People need to…
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Alison Arnot: organize their thoughts. They need to decide, how do they feel about this? What are they going to do next? And they can only do that if they can gather and kind of come to terms with the information. So sense-making is about allowing people to speak to each other.
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Alison Arnot: It's about recognizing that they're going to take information from lots of different sources, so you, as the organization, you want to be in on that conversation, but you need to recognize that you can't necessarily control it.
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Alison Arnot: So it's about talking to people, it's about two-way communication. As we go through the framework, two-way communication becomes increasingly important.
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Alison Arnot: So in the beginning, Danny, you're right, it's very directive, it's very instructive, it's about keeping people safe and protecting them from harm. And as we go through the crisis, it's about becoming more encompassing, it's about listening to different views, it's about listening to different thoughts and different feelings, and then eventually, as we move towards the kind of organizational needs, it's about listening to different ideas.
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Alison Arnot: And how do we kind of overcome this situation together? But the sense-making is about how do people feel, what do they know, what do they need to deal with, and it's really about
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Alison Arnot: enabling the line managers and the leaders of the organization to facilitate conversations. So, yes, we want to, share some central content. Of course, we want to shape a narrative, we want to give people the information that they need.
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Alison Arnot: And we find out what that is by asking them, what do you need? You know, people say, oh, you know, there's nothing to say. Well, if people are talking, they're saying something. So there is always something to say, even if it's about asking them, well, what is it that you want to talk about? What is it that you want to know right now?
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Alison Arnot: So it's about, kind of, facilitating those conversations to happen. And again, there's no… there's no one template that fits all. Something that's going to work in a manufacturing organization may not work in retail, for example, but it's about recognizing
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Alison Arnot: How are people communicating with each other, and how can the organization participate in those conversations in a meaningful and authentic way, without, kind of.
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Danny Gluch: Forcing itself into the conversation and turning people off.
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Alison Arnot: But actually, enabling that sense-making to happen.
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Marion: I… when I… when I think about what you're saying, and I kind of take that back to my earlier thing about you… as an HR person, you often are the crisis comms person, as well as everything else.
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Marion: it's about curating a toolbox, because you're right, like, most things in our job, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to human beings, right? So, we talk about this a lot, is about curating a toolbox.
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Marion: which has lots of different things that you can select from, and I think crisis is exactly one of those things that needs a toolbox, because, to your point.
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Marion: everybody needs something different. You know, companies that are well organised and well-resourced will likely have, certainly in the US, and I know in the UK, they will likely have access to counselling, you know, EAP, things like that.
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Marion: Obviously when there's been a very serious incident, companies are very likely to bring in external support, whether it be counsellors, therapists, what have you, which is great, but
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Marion: that's on the very severe end, and not necessarily on the kind of, like, day-to-day type stuff, which can still be very challenging and problematic and traumatic for some individuals. Again, go back to the layoff situation.
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Cacha Dora: ….
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Marion: But, you know, without, leaning into those change management
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Marion: aspects, like, you know, you talked about bridge, you know, we talked about Cotter, you know, that guiding coalition, those change agents are so important.
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Marion: support.
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Marion: Because that's what's going to help people make sense of it, and that's what's going to help move them along in the journey. And I think this is where a lot of companies miss a trick, because they're very keen to dampen down the fires very quickly.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Marion: and say, if we don't talk about it, everyone will just kind of figure it out, settle down, and then we'll move on. But actually, that's where stuff's blowing up on blind, for example, because
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Marion: you know, employees need that outlet, right? They need that ability to articulate their thoughts, to help process, and to help move through those stages.
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Marion: So, here's the question. What… What advice would you give?
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Marion: to…
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Marion: chief people officers, HR practitioners, that are having to deal with this stuff day in, day out, and are struggling to maybe get their organisations to understand the severity of these types of situations and the lasting impact.
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Marion: Mmm.
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Marion: What would you… how would you guide them on that?
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Alison Arnot: First of all, I would say there are different types of crisis that any organization can face, and the different types of crisis require different responses. So, a Me Too-type situation will require a different comms response
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Alison Arnot: been a malevolent attack, or a cyber incident, or whatever. So the first thing I would say is to be really open and honest, and think about what kinds of situations
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Alison Arnot: might my organization face? And then, what kinds of different
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Alison Arnot: needs would people have in that type of situation? What practical, what psychological needs would they have? And then start planning. …
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Alison Arnot: I talk in the book about the importance of planning, and I give a lot of guidance in the book on how we can plan for many, many different types of crisis, and exactly as you say, offer a toolbox, quite.
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Marion: Hmm.
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Alison Arnot: quite a chunky toolbox, to be honest, because there's lots of… there's lots of different, there's lots of different things that… that we might need to deal with, but the planning helps with that muscle memory. It helps us understand that in certain types of situations, we're going to have to take certain types of actions. It also helps us understand that, yes, while there is no template.
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Alison Arnot: While there is no, kind of, one-size-fits-all, there are things that we can do
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Alison Arnot: So there are certain types of messages that we would want to put out. To Kasha's point, we need to say something quickly, because if we don't say anything at all, we then have that risk that the narrative is kind of dictated by others, rather than by the organization. So the first thing we can do is we can take some action points and say.
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Alison Arnot: I am gonna… I am gonna plan for this. I am going to prepare in advance. I am going to, first of all, work to create that culture of psychological safety, build that culture of listening, so that I minimize the risk of crisis happening in the first place. But if it doesn't.
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Alison Arnot: …
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Alison Arnot: if a crisis does occur, I'm going to set myself up with the templates, I'm going to set myself up with the networks, I'm going to set myself up with the relationships, I'm going to set myself up with the kind of how-to guides, and I'm going to discuss those with other people so that should a situation hit, none of us are kind of thrown the mic
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Alison Arnot: and thought, oh, I don't know what to do here. We're throwing the mic, and we think, okay, this is a frightening situation, it's as frightening for me as it is for anyone else in the organization, but I've practiced for this.
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Alison Arnot: I've thought about this. I know what to do. My first step is to get this message out. It's to approve it in this way. My next step is to start collating so we're ready to go. And that's the biggest piece of advice that I would give to anyone. Prepare in advance. Know your organization as well. Know your people inside out. HR professionals are great at this, but we really
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Alison Arnot: need to know, in some organizations, one message will resonate, people will embrace it.
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Alison Arnot: In other organizations, exactly the same crisis message, in exactly the same situation, will not resonate.
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Alison Arnot: because of the history of the organization, because of the relationships within the organization, because of the cultural, kind of, norms within the organization. So again, it's about knowing your organization and recognizing what is going to work here.
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Alison Arnot: that might not necessarily be traditionally understood best practice. What are the differences in this situation, rather than the similarities, so that you can prepare to advise and hold a mirror to your organization, hold a mirror to the leadership team, and say, okay.
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Alison Arnot: Sounds like a good message, but let's play out how that's gonna… how that's gonna work here.
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Marion: Yeah. I think this is one of the really powerful messages, or really powerful lessons that smaller organisations can take from
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Marion: you know, larger organizations, like, when I think back to working in the airport, or working in some really large, large-scale retailers, …
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Marion: these organizations have scenario planning and have crisis planning down to a T, particularly in the airport. You know, I've done multiple tabletop exercises that you will have been in.
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Alison Arnot: And….
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Marion: you know.
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Marion: I think it can be… in an airport, for example, that's just normal, right? You're planning for all sorts, a crash, a fire, a fatality, a this, a that, whatever. So that muscle memory that you talk about, it's there. I think it can be very difficult
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Marion: To try to, convince leadership teams in those… in companies that are not in that sort of mindset to think in the way that you're thinking.
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Cacha Dora: Yeah.
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Marion: Because.
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Alison Arnot: They're like… Yeah, absolutely.
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Marion: It's never gonna happen to us, you know?
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Marion: We're never gonna have a mass shooter, we're never gonna have this, we're never gonna have that. And to your point.
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Marion: this stuff happens, right? Yeah.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Marion: And so, yes.
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Alison Arnot: That's a good point. And, you know, you think about a restaurant chain, for example, a small restaurant chain, maybe 5 or 6, 5 or 6 restaurants, they're not necessarily going to be thinking about crisis every day, but of course, they could have a food poisoning incident.
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Marion: It could….
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Alison Arnot: a food contamination incident, they could have a shooting, they could have an act of terror. It's less likely, because these things don't happen every day, but it's possible. They could have a flood, they could have a fire, they could have an incident of food contamination. And even in a situation
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Alison Arnot: Where, okay, so if our food was contaminated, what would we do? Well, there will be different… there will be different scenarios that play out there. What if the food was deliberately contaminated by a staff member, as opposed to something that happened in the supply chain?
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Alison Arnot: You know, the response is going to be so different, and so therefore, the crisis needs are going to be so different. So simply having, it seems like very simple advice, but simply having those thoughts, simply having those conversations, not just what could happen, but if it happened in slightly different ways.
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Alison Arnot: What would people re….
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Danny Gluch: How people react.
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Danny Gluch: different roles. What if this person was out on leave? Who's gonna step in, too? And that's where I love the idea
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Danny Gluch: of smaller organizations. You know, you read all about the, you know, how organizations function and prepare for these.
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Danny Gluch: And you read about the good ones doing tabletop exercises, and role-playing, okay, here's what's happened, let's go. Cities, governments do it all the time, which is one of the reasons why I dislike government funding cuts, because they're losing the time and the people to be prepared for floods and earthquakes and fires and…
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Danny Gluch: You know, all those things.
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Alison Arnot: practicing for those is what saves lives.
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Cacha Dora: Yeah, and I think… and Danny, I think also the… the thing is, is that when you get that time to practice, I think there's…
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Cacha Dora: You get those small groups that are like, oh, well, if we voice this, it's bad. We should never even talk about it, because it's bad vibes.
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Cacha Dora: Versus the fact that if they do have those tabletop discussions, what else could they uncover? They could end up with new solutions that live day-to-day, because they uncover something, instead of just putting it under the rug and be like, well, we don't want to deal… we don't want to ever talk about it. That's like, what if we actually make something bad happen? Or, you know, like, people just have weird superstitions. Yeah.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah.
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Cacha Dora: And it can show up in business, and it's like, but if you plan for it, A, you've got the muscle memory, but also, like, what if you were able to be like, you know what, let's put this in as a procedure, as a policy, and we might actually be able to make everything smoother.
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Marion: Yeah.
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Alison Arnot: Tasha, it's something I talk about in the book, actually. There are different types of crisis. You have sudden crises, which are sometimes or often unexpected.
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Alison Arnot: But more often in organizations, you have smoldering crises. These are situations which actually could have been foreseen. Management misconduct, you know, poor policies, pieces of equipment that break constantly.
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Alison Arnot: And they need to be surfaced, they need to be spoken about before they cause harm.
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Alison Arnot: That is part of crisis management and crisis communication, stopping the crisis from happening in the first place. And you can't do that if you don't talk about it.
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Alison Arnot: You know, one of the things that I quite often say is when we go into a hotel room and we see the fire exit on the, you know, the instructions on the back of the hotel room door, we don't think, oh my god, this is an awful hotel, there's going to be a fire here.
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Alison Arnot: We think, great, I know what to do.
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Cacha Dora: You're right, you're so right!
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Danny Gluch: So good, I love that!
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Cacha Dora: That's true, it's true.
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Danny Gluch: I actually had friends, I actually had friends who were in a large hotel when there was a fire, and…
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Danny Gluch: Having the signs and things saved.
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Alison Arnot: dozens, if not hundreds, of lives when that happened. Of course.
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Danny Gluch: And it's just one of those things that I… what a great analogy of, yes, having the sign is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of preparedness, and you need to be prepared. Practice makes better, people.
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Marion: Duh.
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Danny Gluch: Fire drills.
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Marion: Oh, that just reminded me, this won't make any sense to Danny or Casha, but Alison, you'll get this one. Many, many, many years ago, when I was in a hotel in Manchester, and there was a fire alarm went off in the middle of the night.
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Marion: And I think someone had been smoking in the room or whatever, but the entire hotel empties out, and I'm in my pyjamas at, like, 2 in the morning in Manchester in January, and I'm… and I'm… and I hear a Scottish accent beside me, and I'm, like, turned around, and it's Ali McCoist, who's, like, really, really famous Scottish footballer slash football team manager, and I'm… we're both in our pyjamas, and I'm thinking, this is ridiculous, I'm still
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Marion: next to Allie McCoist in my jammies.
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Marion: But going back to something you were saying a minute ago, and it just got me thinking again about that
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Marion: that…
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Marion: The bonds and the proximity that leadership teams need to have with each other, but also with the wider organization, because
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Marion: Because psychological safety, right? But when I… again, when I think about the airport, and I think about maybe hospitals, or police, or, you know, fire, like.
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Marion: those people
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Marion: who work together day in, day out, in these types of high-risk situations, they have an intense relationship with each other. You know, and I think about some of the friendships that I have with you and other people from the airport, they've lasted
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Marion: you know, decades, right? Because you build those types of very close relationships because of the environment that you're in. Yeah.
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Marion: And I think that when I… when I think about
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Marion: Organisations that are not in those high-intensity, high risk sort of situations.
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Marion: Sometimes, the need for that trust and that psychological safety and that, you know, that ability to build strong human bonds
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Marion: it's kind of, like, poo-pooed on, you know? It's like, it's, like, not seen as a big deal, but…
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Marion: this is where it really comes into its own, that when a crisis happens, and you have that, you've already got that established trust, and you might not know what to do, and you might not know what to say, but at very least, if people feel that you're present, and you're there, and they can see you, and they can… I say touch you, but you know what I mean, not in a creepy way.
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Cacha Dora: Yeah, that, that is… Tangibility, right? Yes.
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Marion: Yes, yes, and the proximity, that in itself is so comforting to people, even if you don't have the answers in the moment.
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Alison Arnot: Yeah, yeah.
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Marion: I don't think companies can, you know, really underestimate that enough.
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Cacha Dora: There's power in human connection. You don't need to make everything so sterile.
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Cacha Dora: Right? Like, especially in a crisis, you're… you're… when your humanity is kicking in, and those fear, right? Like, those fears, those flight or flight… fight or flight.
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Cacha Dora: Get that out properly. You know, you're going to want some form of comfort, some form of reassurance, some form of something that kind of abates those things that are kicking off in the mind.
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Danny Gluch: You mean support and sense-making, Kasha?
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Cacha Dora: I know, right? Yeah, let's not….
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Danny Gluch: It's stabilizing. Let's not rush there.
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Cacha Dora: There's a book on this!
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Alison Arnot: But, you know, it's interesting, like, when I was writing the book, I spoke to over 30 people, some who I'd worked with, many who I'd worked with in the past, some who I hadn't, and I asked them all sorts of different questions, but often.
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Alison Arnot: When I asked them about their real memories of the crisis, whether they were recent or whether they had happened decades ago, people would always talk about the human connections. They would always talk about the team that they worked with, how people made them feel.
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Alison Arnot: And you know, they would reflect on the importance of leaders, the importance of line managers. They remembered clearly those leaders and line managers and colleagues and connections who had supported and helped them, and they remembered very, very clearly the ones who hadn't.
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Alison Arnot: And the pain that that caused as well. So, you know, forging those good, positive relationships in the organization in advance is everything.
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Cacha Dora: Yeah.
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Alison Arnot: It makes a difference.
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Danny Gluch: Wow, that's really incredible. It's… I wish we had, like, 7 hours to talk about this. But I guess I could just read your book.
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Danny Gluch: So, tell us again the title of the book, where people can find it, when they can find it, and also, is there a code to help them get a discount if they're interested in purchasing it?
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Alison Arnot: Of course there is, yes. So my book is called… My name is Alison Arnett.
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Alison Arnot: The surname is A-R-N-O-T. And the book is called Internal Communication in Times of Crisis, How to Secure Employee Trust, Support, and Advocacy in Crisis Situations. It is for sale globally.
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Alison Arnot: You can buy it in-store, you can support your local retailer, or you can buy it on the big, obvious places like Amazon.
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Alison Arnot: If you wanted a code, I would be very happy to share that with you. You would need to use my publisher's website, the publisher's Kogan page, and you can use the code ALISONARNITT25,
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Alison Arnot: I'm sure you guys will be able to share that somewhere in writing, but if you use that on the publisher's website, you'll get 25% off the price.
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Danny Gluch: Wow.
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Alison Arnot: So it's….
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Danny Gluch: formulas work. If I do Allison Arnett 100, do I get 100% off?
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Alison Arnot: Fortunately, no, you don't.
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Cacha Dora: Always trying to game the system somehow.
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Marion: You have to contribute to the book like me, Danny, to get every copy. You have to do the work,
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Danny Gluch: I'm gonna try, I'm gonna see if someone put that in there.
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Marion: But actually, I was gonna say, in all seriousness, you know, I've been obviously, like, talking up this book for a while, not just because, you know, Alison's one of my besties, but I just think that
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Marion: the message is so critical, and again, it's one of those things that poor HR practitioners are not trained for, have no experience in, get very little support with. And so I think that, you know, having read the book cover to cover.
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Marion: This is such an important tool in your toolkit as an HR practitioner to help you through these situations, and not even just HR. Every leader should read this. Every C-suite member should read this book. It's full of absolute gold.
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Danny Gluch: I feel like every parent should read this book.
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Marion: Yay!
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Alison Arnot: Everyone should read this book.
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Danny Gluch: New York Times bestseller, here we come.
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Alison Arnot: Yes.
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Cacha Dora: Absolutely.
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Danny Gluch: Honestly, it was so insightful and impactful. I'm really gonna take away a lot from our conversation, and I'm really excited to go spend 75% of the retail cost.
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Alison Arnot: But, to go….
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Danny Gluch: Get myself a copy, and really dig in, because the framework just seems incredible.
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Cacha Dora: Yeah, what have made it make something so impactful sticky, right? Like, having a good framework like that, like, even in my note-taking, I was like, I want to get into each and every piece of it. So, yeah.
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Alison Arnot: Oh, thank you.
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Cacha Dora: So much.
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Alison Arnot: Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me to talk about it, and if you do read it, please tell me what you think. I'd love to… I'd love to know, because I love talking to people about this subject, and it's something that's just really emerging, but so many people, you know, once they start to…
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Alison Arnot: to talk about it a little bit more, like me, they kind of start to feel quite passionate about the.
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Danny Gluch: See?
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Alison Arnot: value that we can bring. We can protect people from harm, and that's what we want to do. So, you know, if reading this book or studying the framework enables anyone to do that, then for me, that is a… that's a huge success. So, absolutely.
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Danny Gluch: That's wonderful. So many organizations talk about wanting to take care of their people.
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Danny Gluch: Here's a practical guide in a very, very important area.
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Danny Gluch: So, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Thank you all for this wonderful conversation. Thank you, listeners, for subscribing, leaving 5-star reviews, and comments, thank you ahead of time for purchasing this book and all the conversations we're gonna have about it.
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Danny Gluch: Thank you all, we'll see you next time.
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Danny Gluch: Have a great day. I don't know, I feel like I missed something in there. So focused on the book!
