The Source for Communicators

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October 3rd, 2007 Communicating a tragedy at Thrivent

A recent case study on the Internal Comms Hub deals with the kind of communication that most organizations dread: having to share the news of a tragic event with employees.

Unfortunately this became a reality for Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, after receiving the news that a colleague had died while traveling home from work following the collapse of a major bridge in Minneapolis.

Thrivent's senior VP of communications, Marie Uhrich, shares the rapid but compassionate approach that helped the workforce come to terms with the event.

1. Check the safety of all employees
"As soon as we learned of the bridge collapse we activated our automated calling system to check on our employees' safety. Because we knew we couldn’t rely solely on this system, I sent an e-mail asking managers to do a head count of their employees and report in first thing in the morning after the bridge collapse."

2. Deliver the same message, at the same time
"The first communication to employees was delivered at 10am via intercom in our two headquarter locations to ensure that everyone heard the same message at the same time."

After confirming that only one employee had perished, at 6pm Uhrich sent a further voicemail message to all employees, "to ensure that everyone heard the news from us rather than the media".

3. Show compassion
"We chose voice communication so that we could adequately express the compassion and concern of the organization. Sometimes, e-mail just can’t do that."

4. Tell people what you know, when you know it
"One of the biggest challenges was that it was very difficult to stay ahead of the media reporting and also to ensure that we were getting accurate information to convey to employees. I learned that it’s most important to tell employees what you know when you know it, and not to wait for the full story. Just confirm the facts and share them as quickly as possible."

Read the full story on the Hub for Internal Communicators.

Mandy Thatcher
Editor
mandy.thatcher@melcrum.com

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