Quarterly Resiliency Forecast: Developing an Effective Crisis Management Program
Written by Andrea Davis
A Step-by-Step Guide
During uncertain times it is difficult to know how to start or integrate crisis planning into your overall business strategies and risk forecasting. The TRI team has developed crisis management programs for some of the world’s largest companies and we put together a simple step-by-step guide to support you with your program development.
Step 1: Research Company Documents
Research any company governing or legal documents, existing authorities and/or regulation requirements around crisis management, risk mitigation or continuity of operations.
Review all existing emergency, crisis or continuity plans and past incident after action reports.
Step 2: Conduct a Risk Assessment
Determine what hazards and incidents your organization could be impacted by. Access TRI’s free risk assessment template here.
Step 3: For all physical locations, think through incident response protocol. Answer the following questions:
Where do employees evacuate to or shelter-in-place? Do employees know what actions they are supposed to take?
What is your lockdown protocol?
How will you communicate with your employees in a crisis?
How will you account for your employees?
Who do you need to call during an emergency?
If you need to shelter-in-place for a long period of time, do you have food, water, and other supplies for your employees?
Step 4: Create Crisis Response Strategies
Determine impact thresholds to your employees, property and brand to help determine when and how you will respond.
Create a tiered response structure defining roles during a crisis. Consider roles and responsibilities for all employees, specific response teams, and leadership.
Establish processes for managing an incident.
Define strategies for effective communication among employees, leaders, vendors, and other stakeholders.
Develop an incident resource list.
Step 5: Build a Training and Exercise Schedule
Establish a cadence to test your emergency and crisis protocol. Recommendations: annual evacuation/shelter-in-place/lockdown drills; yearly tabletop exercise with crisis teams and leadership; and every six months employee trainings on response roles.
Conduct a short debrief following any incident or exercise and document lessons learned.
Create an action plan to update response strategies with your lessons learned.
Step 6: Audit your Program
Review plans and after action reports every six months.
Check any supplies on an annual basis.
Finally, build a culture of preparedness by providing quarterly e-tips for employees, hosting regular trainings focused on roles and responsibilities during a crisis, and consider offering life safety training such as CPR and first aid.
Want help with your program development, designing an exercise, or creating a plan? Contact the TRI Team for a free, no-obligation consultation.
