A crisis management plan outlines how your business should respond during an emergency. There is never a good time for a crisis, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. As the best defense is a good offense, having a team ready to act with a plan in place to reduce damage and restore business operations is crucial. And it will inevitably reduce your risk of losing time at the 11th hour, which could cause more damage in the long run.
Purpose
Clearly state the purpose of your plan and make sure when people look over it, they can understand its meaning and how to implement it should it be needed.
Framework
Create a list of potential risks and rank them from highest to lowest. After ranking them, create a separate column and list each action.
Response team
You will want to choose a team of leaders who will help with collaboration during the planning process—but be sure to select a group of leaders who will also act during a crisis (this allows those taking action to understand the process and plan inside and out).
Roles and responsibilities
Your team will decide what types of teams / roles will help with different risk potentials, i.e., customer support, operations, marketing, HR, security, etc.
Crisis management process
Conduct a brainstorming session with your response team to assess your company’s risks, utilizing a risk register to identify and analyze the probability of something occurring. A risk register can help prepare you for potential setbacks and help you visualize which threats are more likely to occur.
Once the high-probability risks have been identified, determine the impact they could have on your business. Each can cause different outcomes, and it is essential to analyze each separately.
Alert: Outline the actions necessary to notify the response team as soon as possible. An employee may be unsure if something is considered a crisis, so you will want to designate one person on the response team for triage purposes and direct employees to contact this team member if unsure.
Assess: What happens if the response team is needed? Plan how the team will assess the crisis, gather information, classify the incident (utilize the framework), and prepare to take action.
Activate: Initiate the plan! You will want to explain how the response team will delegate tasks and action items. When activating your plan, communication is critical. Thus, ensure your team understands the process and communicates with each other throughout the action plan.
Administer: You will want to determine how the response team will continue addressing, addressing, and resolving the incident. The crisis’s type, scale, scope and severity will determine the response. Tasks could include communicating with employees, stakeholders and customers, developing a timeline, external legal or technical assistance, moderating and responding to media, and updating your crisis communication plan.
Adjourn: Once the crisis has been handled, you will want to regroup your team to review the process, the response and communication. Discuss what changes should be made and update the plan.
Do’s and don’ts
Preparing for a potential crisis is essential, but communicating the situation and conveying the right message to the right audience is vital.
- DO – Communicate with all audiences. Be upfront and let the public know what is happening along with your internal audiences (employees and appropriate vendors).
- DO – Break your own news. Get in front of the story so you can lead the information. This allows you to control your story on your own terms.
- DO – Take real action steps. Along with communicating the steps taken to all audiences and ensuring the immediate situation is being resolved—you also want to describe what is being done in relation to prevention.
- DON’T – Use no comment. Never say “No Comment” in the face of a crisis, being as responsive as possible without trapping yourself by saying more than you should before you should.
- DON’T – Don’t stall with information. Communicating in real time what you are finding out and as it progresses. Waiting to share information makes your audience feel like you are keeping important information from them.
Maintaining an effective response plan
Make sure you are continually reviewing and updating your response plan. Risks can change over time, and you will want to make sure you are tracking how to mitigate the risk of new products or items.
Preparing a crisis management plan can take a lot of time and effort, but a company must review possible risks while continuing to monitor current risks. A crisis can happen at any time, but when you have taken the time to prepare a plan, your company will become stronger and will be able to anticipate potential risks and quickly respond and resolve them.
To help you get started with your own plan, please download our helpful crisis management plan here.
