Did you know that 32% of companies have no crisis management plan in place? This is an alarming statistic. Is your company a part of the nearly one-third of business that isn’t prepared in the event of a crisis?
A crisis management plan is a plan to help ensure the safety of employees, your business, and the public during a time of crisis or emergency. Crisis planning is essential to ensure everyone is prepared to handle potential chaos with a cool head.
Curious if implementing a crisis management plan is right for your business? Read on for details (spoiler alert - the answer is 'YES').
Prepare for the Unexpected
Crisis planning is essential to prepare for the unexpected. There are many types of crisis that can affect you and your business. Types of crisis your business may face include:
- Theft or vandalism
- Cybersecurity threat or IT failure
- Natural disaster
- Business reputation crisis
- Power outage
- A crisis affecting employees or customers
It may seem like overkill to prepare for some of these scenarios, but these are very real emergencies that happen to companies across the world every day. Preparing for these crisis events in advance will help mitigate the negative effects on your business, employees, and customers.
Minimize Damages to the Company
Having crisis management strategies in place will help to minimize damages to the company. When planning for a crisis, it is essential to both assess risk and determine the potential impact of each scenario.
Assessing potential risk is a good starting point when planning for a crisis. You should evaluate which scenarios are most likely to happen to you, and how frequently. For example, a business working in California will have a higher risk for fires
After assessing the risks you should examine the potential impact of the most likely scenarios with the highest level of impact. When evaluating impact make sure to look at issues with the lens of your customer. Be sure that you are able to continue to provide any contractual support to your customers or clients during a potential crisis.
Safeguard Your Employees
Creating a crisis plan helps to safeguard your employees from financial, physical, and emotional hardship. A crisis plan should be a guidebook for how to deal with potential events and circumstances.
If a problem should arise, the crisis plan should be easy to follow in order to ensure employees can react responsibly in a timely manner. It is key to hold emergency-specific training for employees to learn their responsibilities and action plan if a crisis should occur.
Once your crisis plan is written and approved, consider testing it in real-time. A practice scenario is a great way to teach employees their role in the event of an emergency and the proper steps one should take.
Create a Crisis Management Plan Today
Are you ready to build out a crisis management plan for your company? Alura Business Solutions can help.
Our disaster recovery services can help your business prepare for the unexpected and the unwanted. Learn more about our offerings and services to get started today.
