Crisis Management

When an organisation experiences a sudden and significant negative event, crisis management is the process of ensuring organisational capability is ready and available to effectively lead and manage the situation. This is done through the application of strategies that help deal with the consequences and reduce the disruptive effect on operations.

Crisis can be caused by:

accidental events
intentional actions
financial issues
biological hazards
organisational problems
technological failures
natural disasters and weather events

A crisis transforms normal circumstances, damaging or even halting operations, harming people, negatively affecting finances and destroying reputations. It is usually more severe than regular incidents or failures, which may have consequences but do not necessitate change. The response to crisis often involves acting to counter the disruptive events and implementing reactive changes in policy and procedure to deal with them.

Effective crisis resource management requires well developed plans to be devised and implemented by a competent leadership team. The team’s capability for quick reaction and decision-making needs to be tested and assured before any threats occur. This ensures that, in the event of a crisis, risks are handled promptly and the financial impact is managed, as well as the organisation’s reputation. A crisis management plan also sets recovery actions in motion that may be necessary to restore order and bring about a level of normality.

What Does Crisis Management Mean?

A crisis can occur internally or externally to an organisation. The threat that has caused the crisis may have been already identified in a risk management plan or it may be something that was totally unforeseen.

Crisis management means coping with these threats and dealing with events as they unfold. The stages of crisis management are defined as follows:

Warning
Risk Assessment
Response
Management
Resolution
Recovery

These steps involve assessing and understanding the consequences and implementing aid and recovery plans both during and after the emergency event. The need for crisis management policy arose in the 1980s when large scale operations experienced industrial and environmental disasters that affected their existence, impacting on their people, processes and business revenue.

Risk Response and Rescue provide the following specialist crisis management services:

Developing a Crisis Management Plan (CMP)
Conducting Training for the Management Team
Testing the Crisis Management Plan

Crisis Management vs Risk Management

Whereas risk management assesses and plans for crisis and examines threats and how to deal with them before they happen, crisis management can take place at any time that a critical event threatens to occur, during the emergency situation and after it has happened.

Both strategies result in a plan that aims to restore business continuity. A crisis management plan, like a risk management plan, can be formulated to deal with negative events that could impact on an organisation. Both processes include the assessment of risk as a key step.

Additionally, crisis management often includes a Public Relations factor to help handle the information released into the public domain and any resulting negative effects on perceptions, relationships and reputations.

Making a Crisis Management Plan

Also known as a Disaster Recovery Plan, a crisis management plan involves contingency management and scenario planning. It details the policy to be followed in a crisis situation and the stages required in creating the plan are preparation and information gathering, strategy and process development, plan testing and then training.

A crisis management plan template can assist in ensuring that the crisis is handled in the best way and help reduce serious or long-term effects on the organisation. In devising your model, it is beneficial to work with crisis management consultants such as Risk Response and Rescue who have many years of experience in disaster management and recovery. See our article on first responders at a crisis scene for a crisis management case study.

Also, take advantage of the wide range of real world certification and training courses offered by Risk Response and Rescue who are one of the best crisis management companies to train your personnel with the necessary skills for handling threats and responding to crisis.

Ensure your operation is prepared with a comprehensive crisis management plan, backed by a team of informed and trained people, to give your organisation the best chance of survival in the event of a crisis.

Call now to discuss Crisis Management with Risk Response and Rescue on 02 4283 9300