Is Your Business Experiencing A Crisis? Include These 5 Elements To Your Plan

by Purvi Dalvi Writer

The moment you hear the word crisis, what comes to your mind? Most of you might be considering natural disasters such as cyclone, tsunami, earthquake, something that brings devastation and destruction to an area. But there are other types of crisis as well that arises owing to different events such as existential crisis, human-made crisis, and business crisis. The category of business crisis specifically, number of situations can cause potential damage to your company no matter the size, industry, or resources.

All businesses are susceptible to such crisis; hence, it is essential to be prepared for anything that comes your way. A proper crisis management plan can save you from a disaster. It is imperative to understand the stages of a crisis plan and ensure you have the right people by your side to get through the challenging times.

While doing crisis planning, you must include the following aspects –

Activation guidelines: Firstly, not all incidents and scenarios escalate to the level of crisis. Also, the crisis preparedness program you have in place is such that fights all kinds of challenges. However, the plan gets activated only when the crisis level escalates. The first section of the crisis plan should include this criterion. You must also provide the necessary tools to the team members for them to take decisions at the heat of the moment. The other aspects included in this section are –

Definition of crisis

Crisis levels

Internal protocols

Specific impacts you want your team to cover

Detailed action plan: Your action plans are nothing but a checklist for your crisis team. This is to make sure that no tasks are forgotten when things get hectic. While creating the action plan, you must identify the actions each member of the team needs to carry out within 34 to 48 hours of the occurring of crisis.

Pre-approved crisis strategy and messaging: One of the essential aspects of crisis planning timely, consistent, and effective communication primarily with the stakeholders. However, timely approvals can get delayed, which is why it is a daunting task. The best thing to do here is pre-approving the crisis plan and the defined communication. You need to get them pre-approved from all the right members of the team.

Contact lists: You do not want to search around for numbers when the matter escalates. So, make sure to include the following members under your contact lists –

Every team member of the crisis management

Contact information of the crisis team member’s designated alternate

Number of every stakeholder whom you could potentially reach out during the crisis

Every key vendor and third-party consultants

Detailed resource repository: Under this section of the crisis management plan, you need to add all the extra resources and materials which may be required by any crisis team member when the crisis level escalates. These include –

Timeline

Flowcharts

Stakeholders’ agreements

Network access credentials

Any other element that might be useful for the team members