Is Your Company Prepared for a Crisis?

Is your company prepared for a crisis that can affect companies of all sizes? Your response to a crisis can make or break your company and it’s vital to have an appropriate strategy in place. Your company cannot plan for every possible situation but having strategies in place reduces the panic and stress that follows a crisis.

Common Crises That Arise

Personal Crisis. A personal crisis occurs when a specific individual in your company becomes involved in unethical or illegal activities that affect the company’s reputation as a whole. This type of crisis can magnify if the managerial team handles the it in an unfavorable manner.
Examples of personal crises:

• Sexual Harassment.
• Privacy violations.
• Discrimination of any kind.
• Abuse or excessive force in the workplace.
• Offensive content creation.
• Injuries that occur from unsafe environments or improper training.

Systemic or Operational Crisis. Your internal operating procedures aren’t always perfect. Miscalculations and accidents occur but unless you are prepared, one mistake can cost your company its reputation.

Examples of systematic or operational crises:

• Automobile or product recall.
• Environmental damage from your facility or product.
• Safety accidents from your work environment. 

External Crisis. This type of crisis happens outside of your company walls that make a significant impact on the way your company operates. Although the incident may not directly be your company’s fault, there will be plenty of clean up to handle. This type of crisis can be especially damaging since companies have little control over the issue and often aren’t prepared for an unexpected occurrence.

Examples of external crises:

• Terrorism
• Natural disasters
• Recession 

How to outline/strategize for crisis

You can’t set an action plan for every possible contingency, but you don’t necessarily have to. Define a general guide that makes sense for your company, while keeping the following in mind:

• Determine the type of crisis you are dealing with. What does this situation demand? What are the accurate details you can gather? How will this incident affect your company?

• Define clear objectives. Many crisis strategies are vague in how they want to solve the catastrophes that occurs. Not providing clear steps on how the company should handle the situation can lead to confusion and unwanted responses.

• Craft a response that is informative and meaningful. You may not know all the details yet but try to be as informative as you can and let your audience understand what is being experienced.

• Determine your communication channels. Which channels will you use to get your message across in the most effective way?

• Develop a long-term strategy. Oftentimes, companies put significant effort into their crisis management plans, but once the process is complete, so are their efforts. As much as your company may want to remain out of the news for a specific crisis, keeping your audience continually informed will help alleviate the fear of this reoccurring.

Planning for a crisis can be difficult, as most are unexpected. Don’t let a crisis diminish your company’s legacy and success. Let us help you define your plan of action before, not after, a crisis emerges.

Contact BDeWees Consulting today: (330) 915-2355