How Are Leading Organisations Preparing for Tomorrow's Crises Today?

Crisis preparedness starts long before the crisis hits. The European Communication Monitor 2025/26 interviewed 30 chief communication officers from Europe's top 300 companies and found three critical patterns that separate organizations that handle crises well from those that fall apart:

Organizations that excel during crises aren't necessarily better at managing disasters. They're better at living their values, developing their people, and preparing their leaders before trouble starts.

The European Communication Monitor is the longest-running academic study of global corporate communication. It matters.

This 2025 edition features interviews with 30 chief communication officers from Europe's top 300 companies. These aren't mid-level managers. They oversee an average of €37.86 billion in revenue and 96,000 employees. They exercise power through communication at massive scale.

The 2025 report identifies three intergenerational themes that CCOs prioritize now: values, talent, and coaching. For crisis management professionals, these aren't soft skills. They're core requirements that determine whether your organization survives the next major incident.

Because most crisis communication research focuses on what happens during the crisis. This research explains why some organizations handle crises well and others fall apart—and it doesn't mention crises at all.

The ECM tracks how organizations exercise power through communication before anything goes wrong. That preparation phase determines outcomes when things do go wrong.

Chief communication officers no longer view values as static mission statements mounted on lobby walls. They use them as active navigation tools during complexity.

When the ECM asked CCOs to rank what matters for corporate positioning, they prioritized:

Values now carry as much weight as commercial results. One CCO noted that employees are now evaluated 40% on their adherence to company values—not just performance metrics.

During a crisis, stakeholders judge whether a company's decisions match its stated principles under pressure. Values become the framework for rapid decision-making when time is scarce and information is incomplete.

Organizations that treat values as active tools can make faster, more defensible decisions during incidents. Those that treat values as marketing language struggle to maintain credibility when their actions don't align with their words.

The ECM shows that organizational credibility is now tied to generational expectations. Different age groups evaluate corporate behavior through different lenses.

Here's the critical finding: 44% of Gen Z employees have left jobs because of a lack of purpose. These employees act as validators or whistleblowers. They don't wait out a values mismatch. They take action immediately.

Younger employees are less likely to give organizations the benefit of the doubt during incidents. They evaluate corporate responses through a different moral framework than previous generations.

They also have different communication patterns. They share information differently. They amplify concerns through different channels. Organizations that don't understand these generational differences face amplified reputational damage during crises.

The ECM found that communication departments are investing heavily in internal capability:

But friction exists. CCOs reported significant generational tensions around work commitment (62.5%) and technology use (56.7%).

Preparedness fails when institutional memory walks out the door during retirements. It fails when tech adoption is inconsistent across teams. It fails when critical roles go unfilled or are staffed by people who don't understand the tools they're supposed to use.

Organizations that handle crises well maintain continuity of knowledge and consistency of capability across generations. Those that struggle have capability gaps that only become visible when pressure hits.

The ECM found remarkably high levels of internal coaching:

This isn't basic media training. That's the key difference. This coaching focuses on behavior and judgment under pressure.

90% of CCOs measure coaching success through visible behavior changes rather than simple deliverables. They're not looking for people who can recite talking points. They're developing leaders who can make sound judgments when plans fail and scripts become irrelevant.

As Philippe Borremans notes in his crisis communication frameworks, rigid scripts break down during real incidents. Organizations need leaders with fluency—the ability to maintain coherence when conditions change rapidly.

The ECM data supports several trends identified in Philippe Borremans' 2026 Crisis, Emergency, and Risk Communication Trends Report:

The Trust Challenge: The CCO focus on values explains why measuring integrity is more difficult than tracking engagement metrics. Trust isn't built through social media likes. It's built through consistent alignment between stated values and actual decisions under pressure.

The Capability Gap: Generational technology gaps mirror what Borremans identifies as the AI Preparedness Gap. Organizations still lack the hybrid talent needed for data intelligence during crises. They have people who understand communication but not technology, or people who understand technology but not communication.

The Integration Deficit: Treating employees as validators requires communication and HR functions to work together seamlessly. Misalignment between these functions often triggers crises rather than preventing them.

The Preparedness Paradox: Coaching bridges the gap between rigid scripts and the fluency leaders need when plans fail. Organizations invest in crisis plans but underinvest in developing leaders who can operate effectively when those plans prove inadequate.

The ECM shows that resilience is built before a crisis starts. It's determined by how an organization lives its values, develops its people, and prepares its leaders during normal operations.

Organizations don't suddenly become effective communicators during crises. They reveal whether they've done the foundational work during calm periods.

The European Communication Monitor is the longest-running academic study examining corporate communication globally. Crisis professionals should care because it tracks how leading organizations build the foundational capabilities that determine crisis outcomes—values integration, talent development, and leadership preparation—long before incidents occur.

Values function as active crisis tools by providing a framework for rapid decision-making under pressure. When 80% of CCOs prioritize societal values alongside commercial results, they create clear criteria for evaluating options during fast-moving incidents when time is limited and information is incomplete.

Intergenerational risk emerges when different age groups within an organization evaluate corporate behavior through different moral frameworks. With 44% of Gen Z employees leaving jobs over purpose misalignment, organizations face heightened vulnerability if their crisis responses don't align with the values expectations of their youngest employees—who are also most likely to amplify concerns publicly.

The ECM found friction around work commitment (62.5%) and technology use (56.7%) reflects fundamental generational differences in how people approach work and adopt tools. These gaps create crisis vulnerabilities when teams can't maintain consistent capability across age groups or when institutional knowledge is lost during generational transitions.

Leadership coaching focuses on developing judgment and behavior under pressure rather than teaching people to deliver talking points. With 90% of CCOs measuring success through visible behavior changes, this coaching prepares leaders to maintain coherence when crisis scripts fail and plans prove inadequate.

The ECM findings validate several key trends in Borremans’s 2026 Crisis, Emergency, and Risk Communication Trends Report: the Trust Challenge (difficulty measuring integrity versus engagement), the Capability Gap (hybrid talent shortages), the Integration Deficit (alignment failures between functions), and the Preparedness Paradox (investing in plans while underinvesting in people).

Organizations should audit three areas: whether their values function as active decision-making tools during complexity, whether they're addressing generational capability gaps and knowledge transfer challenges, and whether their leadership development focuses on judgment under pressure rather than script delivery. The ECM shows these foundational elements determine crisis outcomes.

When 44% of Gen Z employees leave over purpose misalignment, organizations lose both institutional knowledge and internal validators. During crises, organizations need employees who believe in the mission enough to defend decisions publicly and internally. Purpose misalignment creates a reservoir of potential whistleblowers rather than advocates.

The European Communication Monitor 2025/26

The 2026 Crisis, Emergency, and Risk Communication Trends Report by Philippe Borremans, RiskComms Consulting, 2025

Philippe Borremans is a crisis, risk and emergency communication specialist and founder of RiskComms consulting, with 25+ years of experience developing specialized frameworks including the Universal Adaptive Crisis Communication (UACC) Framework and AI-Augmented Crisis Decision Matrix (ACDM). His research examines how organizations build crisis capability before incidents occur.