Colleges/Universities: Best Practices During Coronavirus

• According to Harvard Business Review, a best practice that colleges and universities are implementing to be proactive when connecting with their audiences to generate positive sentiment and take a leadership stance during coronavirus is to communicate early and often with key constituencies throughout the crisis.
•  Another best practice that colleges and universities are implementing is to be as transparent as possible when communicating with audiences by being empathetic, honest, and open to maintain credibility.
•  Creating a team for centralized communication is also a best practice that colleges and universities are implementing as a crisis-response team that can proactively respond very quickly. This team is recommended by industry experts to be small, with five to seven people that will include a member of the leadership team, someone from corporate communications, an HR executive, and an expert in a particular area of concern. This team is also recommended to: Meet regularly to monitor the situation closely as it continues to evolve; Be the main source of information about the crisis; Give regular updates to key constituencies; Be as transparent as possible by explaining what is known, what is not known, and sources of information; and Be succinct and avoid long messages written by health professionals or lawyers that may not be read or easily understood.
• Specifically when communicating with employees, industry experts advise recognizing that employees are the most important constituency when acting as ambassadors in the community. Therefore, a best practice that colleges and universities are implementing is to proactively communicate with their employees by: Posting information regularly in a highly visible location such as a physical location or a virtual one like email, the college or university intranet, or a Slack or Facebook channel; Describing how decisions were made about issues such as travel and working from home; Communicating no less than every other day; and Trying to provide timely information rather than waiting until all of the answers are known.
• When being proactive in communicating within their communities, a best practice that colleges and universities are implementing is to enhance their relationships within their communities and generate postive sentiment by: Providing resources such as cleaning supplies or food for those in quarantine, Providing information to the local media to help to calm communities down while also enhancing their credibility, and Providing transparency about what is happening within their college or university rather than remaining silent.