It is a recipe for a crisis that many organizations assume they will never have to face. In 2010, Taiwanese-owned and Apple-supplying Foxconn found itself in the middle of an international reckoning after a spate of suicides at its Shenzhen megalopolis in China, drawing attention to the unforgiving and intense pressures of factory life.
This is not a problem unique to China. Japan has long struggled with karoshi, or death from overwork. Japan’s Ministry of Health reported a record number of deaths and health disorders related to overwork in fiscal 2024.
In 2017, Japanese public broadcaster NHK apologized to the parents of a young reporter who died of heart failure after logging 159 hours of overtime in a single month. She was found still clutching her mobile phone…absolutely tragic.
This revelation shocked the nation, particularly as NHK had actively reported on and spoken out against karoshi at other companies, including the 2015 suicide of a young woman at major advertising agency Dentsu, who had logged more than 100 hours of overtime in one month. It was later revealed that Dentsu had instructed employees to falsify their timesheets to keep reported hours within the legal overtime limits.
When a crisis hits, communication becomes a double-edged sword.
The immediate impact of a crisis at this level is devastating. Companies find themselves grappling with loss of life, collapsing employee morale, intense public outrage on social media, scrutiny from NGOs, activists, government bodies, regulators, and investors, as well as pressure from media, business partners, and customers.
We know the basics: respond quickly, put facts and key messages out, issue statements with empathy, keep stakeholders regularly updated on investigation findings, and place senior leaders front and center to express remorse and communicate transparently. But in this day and age, is that enough to quell public anger?
In the past, organizations communicated to audiences. Today, they communicate into tribes.
People no longer receive corporate responses as neutral information. They interpret them through identity, experience, and moral alignment.
In the cases above, the public was not simply asking whether labor laws had been breached. They were asking whether the organization belonged to the same moral universe they did.
For many, the tragedy was a symptom of a work culture where long hours were normalized, endurance was praised, and silence was mistaken for consent.
Communication strategies of the past are no longer sufficient to stabilize a crisis, because a crisis is no longer just about an information gap to be filled quickly. It has become a question of integrity and loyalty.
The more technically correct the response is, the more emotionally distant it appears.
Attempting to communicate values such as care, responsibility, and accountability after a clear case of abuse tells the public that apologies are procedural rather than genuine.
People are highly sensitive to this gap. Even if they cannot articulate it precisely, they recognize when language compensates for reality instead of truly reflecting it.
There is a clear lesson here for business leaders.
Strategic communication can no longer be treated as a tool reserved for moments of crisis. By the time a statement is required, reputation has already been shaped by everyday decisions, incentives, and tolerances.
In a tribal age, people are not listening for perfect words; they are watching for consistency.
We need to address the grumble on the ground, not merely react to the wrath that follows.
Leaders should ask themselves whether concerns can be raised safely, whether values still hold when they become inconvenient, and whether distance has grown between leadership intent and lived experience. When pressure comes, posture matters more than polish.
Strategic communication today is not about controlling narratives. It is about earning trust long before it is tested, so that when scrutiny arrives, credibility already exists.
Sincerely,
