As important internal stakeholders, employees are particularly vulnerable and susceptible to experiencing negative affective consequences such as anxiety and stress during a crisis. We argue that helping all employees manage crisis-related uncertainty, stress and anxiety will improve overall employee well-being and, in turn, enhance organizational resilience. Moreover, this paper builds upon health communication interventions such as stress inoculation training and organizational communication theory, namely affective events theory. We propose an interdisciplinary approach to strategic internal crisis communication, which targets improving employees' mental adaptability as an essential component of achieving crisis READINESS on an individual level.
The paper synthesizes across literature in crisis communication, organizational communication and health communication to propose a theoretical framework towards improving employee and organizational outcomes when faced with a crisis.
Key findings an integrated theoretical and practical framework for helping employees, crisis managers and organizations be more prepared and ultimately resilient when experiencing an organizational crisis.
The paper makes a theoretical contribution to the field of crisis management by expanding our understanding of what can constitute READINESS at the individual level by drawing upon work from internal crisis communication and health communication interventions. It also offers a practical framework for crisis practitioners to incorporate existing crisis management practices together with emotional intelligence training for employees across all levels of organizations.
