Crisis Communications: What to Do in the First Hour

Updated September 2026 · Written and maintained by the Progression Agency strategy team

Crisis communications is managing what an organization says, to whom, and in what order when something has gone wrong. Almost all of the work that determines the outcome happens before the incident — during it there is time to execute a plan, not to build one. This covers the first hour, the order stakeholders should hear from you, the mistakes that extend incidents into prolonged crises, and what to prepare while nobody is under pressure.

What is crisis communications?

Managing what an organization says, to whom, and in what order when something has gone wrong — before, during and after the event.

Most of the work that determines the outcome happens before anything goes wrong. During the event there is rarely time to build anything; there is only time to execute what already exists.

What counts as a crisis?

Anything that threatens people’s safety, the organization’s ability to operate, or its standing with the people it depends on.

The useful test is not how bad it looks but whether it affects those three. A story that generates coverage but changes none of them is a problem rather than a crisis, and the response should be proportionate.

The bottom row is the one organizations misread most often: a pattern of complaints is not a communications problem, and communicating harder about it makes the eventual crisis worse.

What should you do in the first hour?

Establish the facts, convene the people who can decide, acknowledge that you are aware, and stop speculating internally.

The first hour is about accuracy and acknowledgment rather than explanation. Saying you are aware and are establishing the facts is a complete and defensible position.

Establish what is actually known

Separate confirmed fact from assumption, and write both down so the distinction survives contact with pressure.

Convene the decision group

A small named group who can decide. A large group cannot decide quickly and leaks.

Acknowledge without explaining

Confirming awareness costs nothing and buys time. Explaining before you know is what creates a second crisis.

Prioritize people affected

Anybody harmed or at risk comes before media, regulators or commentary.

Check legal and regulatory duties

Some incidents carry reporting obligations with fixed deadlines that run from the moment of discovery.

Brief internally, immediately

Staff who learn from the news become an uncontrolled channel.

Stop uncoordinated responses

One voice. Well-meaning individual replies create contradictions that are quoted later.

What should you say first?

That you are aware, that you are establishing the facts, what you are doing now, and when you will next update.

The commitment to a next update is what buys the time to be accurate. Without it, silence reads as evasion and the vacuum gets filled by other people.

What is the biggest mistake organizations make?

Explaining before they know, or minimizing something that later turns out worse than described.

Almost every case that becomes a prolonged reputational problem follows the same shape: an early statement that was too confident, contradicted by later facts.

The last two rows describe how crises extend rather than end. A story with no resolution keeps being available to anybody who wants to revisit it.

How do you balance legal advice and communications advice?

By treating them as the same problem rather than competing ones — and by having that conversation before an incident rather than during it.

Legal counsel protects against liability; communications protects against reputational loss. Both are real, and the tension between them is manageable when it is anticipated and destructive when it is discovered at speed.

Get both in the room from the start

Sequential advice produces statements that satisfy one and damage the other.

Distinguish apology from admission

Expressing regret that something happened is not the same as accepting legal liability, and the distinction is well established.

Understand mandatory disclosures

Some incidents require notification within fixed periods, which constrains the communications timeline.

Agree the pre-approved language in advance

Holding statements approved before an incident save hours at the moment they are needed.

Document decisions as you make them

Both for later review and because the record may matter.

Who needs to hear from you, and in what order?

Anybody harmed, then staff, then customers and partners, then regulators where required, then media and the public.

The order matters more than the wording. People who find out about something affecting them from a news report respond very differently from people told directly.

What is a holding statement and what should it contain?

A short pre-approved statement confirming awareness, expressing appropriate concern, stating what is being done, and promising a further update.

It should be written before it is needed, approved by legal in advance, and adaptable to several scenarios without rewriting from scratch under pressure.

What should you prepare before anything happens?

A named decision group, contact details that work out of hours, holding statements, a list of who must be told, and an agreed spokesperson.

The preparation is unglamorous and it is almost the entire difference between organizations that handle incidents well and those that do not.

A named crisis team

With deputies. The plan cannot depend on one person being reachable.

Out-of-hours contact details, tested

Most incidents surface outside working hours, and a list nobody has verified is not a list.

Pre-approved holding statements

Covering the scenarios most plausible for your organization.

A stakeholder map

Who must be told, by whom, in what order, through what channel.

An agreed spokesperson, trained

Media training before an incident, not during one.

Access to your own channels

Somebody reachable who can actually publish to the website and social accounts.

A monitoring arrangement

So you learn about it from your own systems rather than from a journalist.

A scenario exercise, run at least annually

The plan that has never been rehearsed is a document rather than a plan.

Should you respond to everything online?

No. Respond to people affected, correct material factual errors, and leave the rest — responding to everything amplifies things that would otherwise pass.

The judgment is about whether a response reaches people who matter or simply extends the life of a story among people who do not.

When is a public apology the right move?

When you are at fault, when people were harmed, and when you can say what you are changing — all three, not one of them.

An apology without a stated change reads as a technique. A statement of change without acknowledgment reads as evasion. Both together are what actually resolves things.

How do you know when it is over?

When the affected people have been dealt with, the cause has been addressed, and you have said what changed — not when coverage stops.

Coverage stopping and the issue being resolved are different events, and treating the first as the second is how organizations get a second cycle.

What should happen afterwards?

A review of what happened, what the response got right and wrong, and what changes in the plan — conducted honestly rather than defensively.

The review is the only part of crisis communications that reduces the cost of the next one, and it is the part most often skipped because everybody is relieved it ended.

The final row is the one that determines whether there is a next time. Communications manages an incident; it does not prevent the next one, and treating it as if it does is the most expensive misunderstanding in this field.

How does this differ for a small organization?

The principles are identical and the resources are not — which means the preparation matters more, not less, because there is no capacity to improvise.

A small organization can do the whole of the useful preparation in an afternoon: three names, a tested contact list, two holding statements and an agreed order.

Nothing in that table requires an agency or a budget. It requires somebody deciding to spend an afternoon on it while nothing is wrong, which is the part that does not happen.

What role does monitoring play?

Finding out early, from your own systems rather than from a journalist — because detection speed determines how much of the response is yours to shape.

Almost every post-incident review finds that the organization learned later than it should have, and the cost of that delay compounds through everything that follows.

Should you ever say ‘no comment’?

Almost never. It is widely read as confirmation, and it forfeits the opportunity to say something true and neutral instead.

Saying what you can say — that you are aware, that you are looking into it, when you will update — is nearly always available even when the substance is not.

Frequently asked questions