Crisis management systems should be reviewed on a regular basis. Constant upgrades and enhancements ensure that inefficiencies during execution are ruled out.
PAS 200, 2011 - Part 5 of 5 Evaluating Crisis Management Capability
This can be achieved through rigorous training programs and testing drills that flesh out the crisis management plan and provide a better understanding of the practicalities involved, along with areas that can be improved. A good crisis management plan addresses issues that impact a business both directly and indirectly.
Even in the case of highly effective crisis management systems, the organization and its staff will vouch for its effectiveness only when they see the plan, along with the roles and responsibilities of individual staff and focus groups, tested out extensively through exercises . This creates a sense of familiarity with the response strategy that has been put in place and increases even the most pessimistic employee’s level of trust in the organization’s ability to respond to a crisis. ‘No fault’ learning and team building are other benefits that can be drawn from these initiatives.
Training
The roles and responsibilities of employees during a crisis management should be mapped to their daily tasks. For example, the IT department should be in charge of taking backups of important data. The operations department should be in charge of handling the logistics of coordinating exit procedures, transfer of important assets etc. The leadership team should address specific stakeholder and customer concerns and so on.
Benefits of profile specific training
- This kind of segregation of tasks based on employee skill sets reduces the time and effort required for training and knowledge transfer.
¹planned rehearsal of a possible incident designed to evaluate an organization’s capability to manage that incident and to provide an opportunity to improve the organization’s future responses and enhance the relevant competences of those involved
- Planning for a crisis becomes a logical extension of the staff’s daily tasks and activities.
- Vulnerabilities, threats and risks also can be spotted well in advance and nipped in the bud.
- Since emergency roles/responsibilities are closely related to the employee’s job profile (IT/Operations/HR/Finance and so on), individuals and teams can contribute to updates and enhancements in the existing plan while on the job, even on a daily basis, if required.
Needless to say, crisis management objectives and their corresponding training needs should be factored into yearly performance goals and targets. This reiterates their importance and keeps the crisis plan fresh in the organization’s memory.
Factors to consider while designing training exercises
- It might seem like stating the obvious, but a clearly defined crisis management objective helps in measuring the plan’s ability in achieving the required results.
- Crisis management plans are made up of many components that can be further broken down into segments, modules and individual tasks. Many of these jobs are interdependent. Some even follow a sequential order wherein one action item cannot be executed until a prior action has been completed. Organizations should test out their crisis management procedures as standalone activities, as and where applicable. This would prove to be fairly simple and require a nominal amount of resources, manpower and infrastructure. However, the true effectiveness of a crisis management plan can only be gauged when all the tasks, modules and components are synchronized and executed as an integrated whole in response to an emergency. This would entail time, money and substantial expenses. Both, isolated as well as synchronized testing activities should be planned out in a logical sequence of increasing complexity in order to avoid unnecessary wastage in terms of time, effort and resources.
- Putting plans into action comes with a number of challenges such as team dynamics, individual ability, intense time bound activity, stress and pressure, tough decision making and so on. Hence, crisis management teams should keep exercise drills as relevant and feasible as possible.
- Different types of exercises and drills can be employed for testing out a crisis plan’s capabilities.
- Drill – This approach involves coordination and supervision and is usually employed to test out a standalone operation that involves a low level of complexity.
- Seminar Exercise – Individuals are grouped into various teams in order to evaluate the pros and cons of specific tasks through debates and discussions. Seminar exercises are often used as a precursor to gauge the assumptions, intentions and other factors involved while planning out more elaborate and complex exercises.
- Table-top exercise – Participants, individually or in groups, are guided through possible crisis scenarios that evolve in terms of scale, complexity and impact.
- Simulation – Simulation exercises provide valuable data that aids in prioritizing crisis management tasks and segments based on objectives, time constraints, available resources and other factors. Individual participants’ performance can also be tracked and additional training needs can be identified through an ongoing process.
- Live Play – This takes simulation exercises a step further. Crisis management responses are tested in real time.
The choice of exercise depends on a variety of factors such as budgetary constraints, infrastructural limitations, operational complexity, business criticality and many more.
- Many organizations outsource crisis management requirements to consultants who specialize in handling such situations. Third party agencies can gauge the business needs in an unbiased and objective manner, besides providing cost effective solutions. Having said that, emergency plans that are developed in-house can be more detailed, exhaustive and personalized. Crisis plans as such are a large entity that can be broken down into components, segments and action items. Businesses can look to create a strategy that achieves a healthy balance between outsourced and in-house solutions for specific components and segments of the emergency plan.
- Some business practices that are detrimental to the company’s goals and objectives in the long run become ingrained in the organization’s operational culture over many years. Testing out crisis plans often also involves confronting such business practices which can lead to friction and a resistance to change.
- Crisis management exercises should be conducted in earnest and are not to be taken lightly. The amount of effort and enthusiasm invested in them are directly proportional to the organization’s crisis resilience.
- Exercise drills can raise suspicions amongst individuals, teams and departments as they expose vulnerabilities and loopholes in existing procedures. This is why many employees tend to view them as threatening, intrusive and also as an unnecessary interruption that takes their focus away from their day to day activities.
Characteristics of a Crisis-Aware Organization²
Organizations should constantly be on the lookout for new and improved ways of safeguarding their commercial interests. Any enterprise’s resilience in the face of adversity creates a sense of trust and security in its investors, stakeholders and customers which in turn has an indirect, yet positive impact on revenue. Business
resilience can be achieved through initiative, a proactive approach and a willingness to adapt.
- Active Learning – Crisis responses should be archived for use in developing contextually relevant training exercises. Pitfalls and inefficiencies in previous responses should be analyzed for possible improvements and upgrades.
- Learning by example – Any organization, no matter how unique its operational structure might be, shares characteristics with other businesses with similar profiles. These similarities allow companies to generically adopt the salient features in other organization’s crisis response strategies and adapt them to their specific needs.
- Culture analysis – Organizational culture plays a significant role while gauging a business’ ability to implement an emergency strategy. The norms prevalent within a company along with individual belief systems and values can collectively prove beneficial or detrimental to the emergency response, depending on the situation. Such cultural and socio-demographic factors often influence the level of involvement employees express for or against a certain course of action. A sound leadership approach based on the need of the hour becomes critical when such discrepancies arise.
- Context analysis – Any organization derives its contextual relevance from its immediate surroundings and business environment. Situations that come close to creating an emergency become equally important while studying an enterprise’s commercial ecosystem. These close calls should be studied carefully. This includes identifying (i) the presence of factors that impede, and (ii) the absence of factors that promote the eruption of a crisis.
