How to keep families connected in a crisis
Last spring, 140 colleges and universities in the U.S. saw demonstrations on their campus. While mostly peaceful, each caused disruption and confusion for administrators, faculty, students... and the families miles away desperate to understand what was happening.
When students are anxious or scared, they call their parents. In fact, nearly 50% of students communicate with their families daily. You want those parents to not only comfort their students, but be properly informed on what is happening and able to steer them towards campus support.
We’re here to help you keep your families informed, so we brought in Danielle Walker, Asst Director, Family Engagement at University of Maryland; Justin Inscoe, Director of New Student & Family Programs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Dee Dee Kanikkeberg, Director of Parent and Family Programs, University of Oregon, to go through their experience and learning from the last year during a recent webinar.
We pulled their thoughts into the top 5 takeaways for how to communicate with families during crisis situations below. (Want to hear straight from your peers? Jump to the webinar recording below!)
If it’s important to share with students, it’s important to share with families
If it’s a must know for students — and your institution is busy getting the word out through email, texts, portals, and social media — it’s something you should be sharing with families, too.
To do that you may need to consider accessibility. Consider using the channels you know parents rely on most, translating into different languages, and how easy resources are to access. Try to reduce barriers to information as much as possible.
“We've had feedback from families that say we don't care what it looks like, we just want to have it. They don't want to click through an email and then log into something else or have to go find it on a page of our website,” shared Inscoe.
2. Use data to drive your decisions
We know 81% of families want communication at least weekly from their students’ institution — or whenever there is information to share. You can bet that includes campus happenings like a protest or encampment.
But you — or administration — may want metrics to show how often you communicated, or how those messages were received. Ensure everyone knows what those are, and that results are shared transparently for either confirmation or discussion about future improvements.
Kanikkeberg offered that as she shared updates about on-campus protests with families last Spring, central administration at UO wanted to have confirmation of delivery. With CampusESP, she was able to report the number of email sends, open and click rates, and more to show word was getting out.
3. Decide, then disseminate
Know before a situation starts who the decision makers will be and what your role is.
Your campus might lead with a more central communications approach. At the University of Maryland, information goes to the new Director of Strategic Marketing from deans and offices across campus. With her position among VPs, she consolidates information and directs what should be shared and when.
You might have an incident response approach where communication is funneled to one office and specifically down to one highly visible person like a President or Dean, as UNC at Chapel Hill and the University of Oregon did. This authority brings gravity and steadiness to a situation.
Once you know the powers that be that need to be involved, think about how you will distribute information once it’s been blessed.
“We used high level announcements and emails through CampusESP to reach the absolute bulk of folks with high level content. We take official headers created by university communications that want to get messaging out to the community,” said Inscoe.
4. Respond to questions that count
When concerned, families will inevitably be calling and emailing because it’s the only control they have over the situation. Obviously you want to be a sympathetic ear and listen to concerns — but you’re only one person.
Be clear about when you will — and will not — respond to families. You only have so much bandwidth, and in some cases your efforts will not satisfy.
“We had some frequent flyers who kept coming back. We focused on making sure families knew what the policies were so whether they were complaining or asking questions, it was very clear what the expectations from the university were,” said Inscoe.
5. Look for patterns to show the gaps in your information sharing
Be responsive to feedback. What questions are you getting after sending out information, and how do you need to update communications holistically to address them? This could be by maintaining Frequently Asked Questions or sending out clarifying messages.
Kanikkeberg and the University of Oregon used a tracker to log calls and communications and find patterns in the same questions or concerns posed. “There's probably eight or ten thematic areas that we would go in and log,” she said.
Of course, the critics are the loudest. But it means they’re responding, which is still valuable communication.
“We’ve still gotten some feedback from families that they feel like we're taking a sterile approach to what we're doing and we're not leaning one way or the other. We're just kind of riding the middle line and they want us to take a stronger stance. But we do have to think about the fact that we are a public institution. We really just try to share as much information as possible and encourage people to educate themselves,” said Walker.
But remember: most families are appreciative of the information. Some even send back a quick thank you.
6. Be proactive
Families may have questions about what’s allowed or legal on campus.
Walker shared, “There were a lot of questions on, ‘How are you allowing this to happen? This has to be against some rule or violating some policy.’ So we wanted to make sure that families understood what our policies were.”
In response, Maryland created a free speech website outlining campus and legal policies about flyers, chalking, and other common forms of expression. UNC has also proactively shared similar information on free speech policies with families in advance of possible events coming this Fall.