Essential Coronavirus Lessons for Your Company, Communicate often with all your audiences. Beware of seeming tone-deaf.

If your company isn’t thinking about and taking action regarding coronavirus, you had better get started. No matter how small or local your company is, it’s crisis communications time. It’s not a crisis of your making, but it nonetheless demands your attention. Your inattention can negatively impact how people feel about your brand.

How you communicate internally and externally about coronavirus is a make-or-break public relations moment. Here are some thoughts to consider.

Communicate prolifically

Communicate regularly with all your audiences. For example, you should be letting employees know things like when to come to work and when to work from home, how to communicate with customers, how to keep the office or facilities clean, and what, if any, adjustments you’ll make to your sick-leave policy. If you don’t maintain open communication with your people, you are heightening your staff’s stress during an already stressful time.

Externally, you should be communicating with customers and vendors about what you are doing to keep them and your own people safe. People want to do business with organizations that show they care about the people who work for them and with them, and who buy from them. I’ve been getting such emails from companies like American Airlines and Lyft.

If you are a gym, fitness center, restaurant, daycare facility, or any place where large crowds gather, you need to communicate regularly and often with your clientele.

Other communication can wait

While you pour all of your time and energy into coronavirus communication, put other communication on the back burner.

Read more: inc