Crisis management is the procedure an organization adopts to deal with critical events that may cause harm to itself or its stakeholders. These events may include different forms of threats, incidents, or other types of negative events that may occur unexpectedly.
A crisis threatens operations and can have negative consequences if not handled appropriately. In management, a threat is seen as potential damage to the organization, its stakeholders, and its reputation. Crises can generate three threats:
- Public safety
- Financial loss
- Loss of reputation
Serious industrial accidents can cause injuries and even deaths. Crises often result in financial losses, reduced purchasing intentions, disrupted operations, and may lead to lawsuits. All crises threaten the reputation of the organization.
Effective crisis management must address all three of these threats. The primary concern is public safety, as failures in this area will intensify the damage. Reputational and financial issues are addressed after ensuring public safety.
In this article, we will talk about the importance of having a plan to deal with this type of situation, as well as what to do during crisis management.
What is a Crisis Management Plan?
A crisis management plan (CMP) describes the processes an organization will use to respond to critical situations that affect its profitability, reputation, or ability to operate.
Business continuity, emergency management, crisis management, and damage assessment teams use CMPs to prevent or minimize disruptions—as well as provide guidance on personnel, resources, and communications.
Importance of a Crisis Management Plan
A crisis management plan opens a channel of communication, which is essential to overcoming a crisis. It keeps the right people informed about local actions and global responses. As the crisis evolves, the organization should update its communications.
During a crisis, employees look to management for leadership and guidance. Without proper communication, they may act or speak inappropriately, causing safety issues.
The organization should designate a crisis communications team. Communication should be clear, concise, and truthful. To expedite this, the organization can create templates with possible scenarios, designate appropriate channels, and connect the necessary information during the incident.
What to do to have good crisis management
Now you know what crisis management is and how important it is to have a plan ready for this moment. So, it’s time to learn what to do to have good crisis management.
Having a fast and accurate response is essential to minimize the impact of any critical event that your organization will face. A competent crisis management plan can ensure the safety of people, the protection of assets, and the effective recovery of your business.
These are the steps you should take during crisis management:
1. Determine potential risks
Based on the area in which your organization operates, assess the greatest risks it may face. A crisis requires quick decisions to limit damage to the organization, stakeholders, and the public. A well-documented CMP allows for rapid action in serious incidents.
Potential crises include:
- Natural disasters: hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.
- Severe weather events: floods, blizzards, and droughts.
- Biological hazards: foodborne diseases and pandemics.
- Accidental events caused by humans: fires, explosions, building collapses, and spills of hazardous materials.
- Intentional events caused by humans: assaults, violence, and fires.
- Technological issues: disruptions and cyber-attacks.
2. Create a crisis management team
Choose people who will be on the front lines of any emergency response. Give priority to department directors, especially those who have leadership experience and can remain calm in crisis situations.
Ideally, this team should be made up of people with diverse and complementary skills. For example, the IT director can quickly identify technical issues and prioritize the most important fixes — keeping communications systems operational at critical times.
The HR director may have greater empathy and be more skilled in interpersonal relationships. This person could help during the crisis by responding to employees’ concerns.
In any case, all relevant stakeholders should know who to contact in different types of crises. Remember to always keep your crisis management team’s contact information up to date.
3. Create a crisis communication strategy
Designate a spokesperson for your crisis management team. This person will be the primary point of contact for public relations, ensuring consistent and controlled communication during critical events.
One thing to consider is investing in a text message alert system that would be able to quickly send notifications to all employees in your company. Through these texts, you can explain what they should do in emergency situations and even provide context for what is happening.
These are some of the main services of this type:
- One Call Now. Allows you to send text messages and emails to groups of any size. Offers unlimited messaging, text-to-speech, a smartphone app, and real-time reporting.
- Everbridge. Helps organizations plan, respond, and recover from critical events. Provides solutions for business operations, people resilience, digital operations, intelligent security, and public safety.
- AlertMedia. Mass notification platform that offers solutions for emergency communication and crisis management.
4. Test and upgrade your plan
Your crisis management plan should be a living document. Distribute it to employees, implement training and testing, and update it regularly.
Hold training sessions, so everyone knows what to do in the event of a crisis. Tests range from tabletop exercises to full-blown simulations. After a test, review the results, discuss what worked and what didn’t, and make changes as needed.
Technical standards and regulatory norms help improve crisis management planning. They help manage business disruptions and increase resilience and are great sources of updates to your plan.
The British Standards Institution (BSI) offers the BS 11200:2014 standard for crisis management. It provides guidance on planning, operating, maintaining, and improving crisis management capability and is relevant to any organization. The standard covers the basic concepts of crisis management, leadership, decision-making, and communications.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) also offers standards for emergency management in the ISO 223xx series. These include ISO 22320:2018 and ISO 22301:2019, which present a business continuity management system.
Conclusion
Implementing and maintaining a crisis management plan is essential to ensure the survival and resilience of any organization in the face of unexpected events.
Whether natural, technological, or human-caused, crises can have devastating impacts. But with a quick response, a prepared team, and a clear communication strategy, it is possible to minimize the damage and protect the interests of the company and its stakeholders.
The crisis management process is ongoing, requiring constant review, training, and adaptation to face new challenges. Therefore, being prepared is not only a competitive advantage, but a necessity for the long-term sustainability of the organization.
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