By: admin@repairbadreputation | February 18, 2022

Crisis Management Plan – Why You Need One And How to Make One?

The world has changed. A lot, that much is certain.

Gone are the days where marketing meant going door to door, spreading leaflets, and talking to people about your upcoming products or services. Going to a radio station or television network seems too outdated already and no one reads the newspaper as much as they do back in the day. Nowadays, every single new business nowadays is always looking towards the Internet to market and promote their products. And it’s also on the Internet where a startup can build up its reputation as quickly as possible.

Of course, one also has to understand that while everything seems ‘instant’ in the online world, the same can also be said to both failure and success. A rising company can easily grab an opportunity and become as big as its competitors while a multi-billion dollar company can easily lose its sterling reputation all because of bad online publicity.

All it takes is a single bad review and a company’s hard-earned reputation is gone in an instant!

The Importance of a Crisis Management Plan

The Internet is not just an avenue of potential business offers and profits, it’s also a gateway where people love to express themselves. Of course, the expression part has this very thin line between expressing one’s self in a good manner and just simply going around creating chaos and mayhem. That is one of the reasons why trolls are rampant on the Internet.

One may pride themselves on keeping their website’s reputation dirt-free, but there will come a time when trolls would suddenly find themselves knocking on your business’s doors. Well, more like your business’s website, to be precise. These people are more than capable of causing damage to your company’s reputation simply because they’re bored or they are paid to do so.

Yes, definitely heard it right. There are thousands of online trolls employed by unscrupulous companies bent on breaking down their competitor’s reputations. We hope we’re making this up, but most companies nowadays do not have a concrete crisis management plan.

The ongoing pandemic is one good example of an ongoing crisis. Almost every business in the world experienced it, but there are only a handful of companies that are able to weather out the storm due to an exemplary crisis management plan. One such business is the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi. As one of the medical facilities tasked to deal with COVID 19 patients outside of China’s borders, the clinic quickly formed a crisis management team that is able to help its employees. The clinic formed the team with the help of members from all other organizational levels. Clinic workers received healthy food, childcare, online workouts, and all other benefits that made their continuous employment with Cleveland Clinic more comfortable during those trying times.

Because of Cleveland Clinic’s crisis management response, everyone who worked for the clinic felt like they were being appreciated and well taken cared of, so work went on smoothly, despite the additional challenges.

Statistics and the Benefits of Having a Crisis Management Plan

Convincing people is never easy. The situation is also the same with trying to convince businesses to adopt a well-thought-out crisis management plan. So it’s only fair to bring out the numbers that will truly open the eyes of business owners to see the benefits of having a crisis management plan.

 

  • According to Morrison & Foerster and Ethisphere, 56% of senior-level executives said that they only ‘have some confidence in their crisis management plans’. And these are executives who are related to crisis management-related fields.
  • An Oxford Executive Research Centre study revealed that publicly traded companies who are able to go about their disaster-recovery plans were able to reduce the initial negative impact of their capital by 60 percent.
  • PWC revealed that around 69% of leaders who felt any kind of corporate crisis between 2014 and 2019 experienced an average of three crises each.
  • JOTW further revealed that only 45% of companies had a documented crisis communication plan, despite 59% of them having already drafted a communications plan before any crisis could start.

As you can see, a company may boast of being able to respond to any crisis on paper, but in reality, it is often the other way around. Not having a concrete crisis management plan is like a bomb that is set to explode at any given moment. When it does, everyone in the company is sure to feel its impact.

Planning for relevant communications, information, and tasks will not just help in reducing the damage that any crisis may bring about, but it will also help in assuring your employees that the company cares about their well-being too. And it just doesn’t extend to your employees; it will also assure their loved ones and the community built around your business too. Your company’s reputation will also be saved from further reputation damage.

Finally, a well-built crisis management plan decreases a company’s downtime should there be a need to shut down operations.

How to Build a Concrete Crisis Management Plan?

Predicting a Crisis’ Impact on Business

Having a company will always have its risks, but being able to predict how much damage a crisis can bring to a business will give you the edge when building a crisis management plan. You can do this by completing a business impact analysis. Use as many resources as possible to draw conclusions.

If one particular crisis impact is focused primarily on your company’s financial stability, then your company’s accounting software is a key resource. You can draw reports and rework your company’s budget to evaluate your company’s cash flow. If the focus draws on reputation damage, then it’s time to have a look at your company’s marketing and social media stats. This information should give you the details you need to move forward with a decent crisis management plan.

Identifying the Risks

As mentioned before, a company will always face risks during its operations. While it’s perfectly safe to say that identifying potential risks is the first step towards creating a crisis management plan, predicting the impact first will make it easier for a company to address the risks it will be facing in times of crisis.

It’s fairly common for the company CEO to be the one to identify the risks a company may face in the future. However, since we’re going to build a strong crisis management plan, you also need to include everyone who is key to the company. Involve company leadership, the crisis response team, relevant employees, and stakeholders. Remember that the important traits of a strong crisis management team are unity, trust, and collaboration.

Identifying the Response

When your crisis management team identifies the risks and has assessed the damage they can bring to your business, it’s time to think about your company’s response to the crisis. You and your team can start thinking of contingency plans that will help your company respond effectively. You can do this by thinking about the steps needed to resolve each issue, the resources needed for those steps to happen, and how the company’s different departments and employees under them can help.

Creating the Plan

Once a company is finished carrying out the first three steps above, it’s time to start building the crisis management plan.

Start by sharing your views and collaborating with key employees for feedback through meaningful conversations. Teamwork is very important for your crisis management plan to work. Listen to everyone’s ideas, challenge ideas that need improvement, and work together with your crisis management team to bring out the best course of action.

A crisis management team that is built on trust and is always open to constructive feedback is a solid one. The plan will come together in a way that will deliver the best possible outcome for everyone involved.

Familiarize the Plan with your Crisis Management Team

Once the crisis management plan is complete, make sure to have your crisis management team be familiar with the plan itself. Make sure everyone in the team knows and understands their role during the crisis and the responses each team member has to make when needed. And when the crisis does happen, make sure your team has easy access to the information they need.

One great way to practice your team’s familiarity with the plan is by implementing drills and rehearsals. Another way of doing so is by introducing a crisis management app.

Reconsider the Plan with your Team Regularly

For a good crisis management plan to work, it must also be open to change on a regular basis. Legal changes, employee turnovers, and technological changes are just a few of the changes that will most likely happen to all companies out there, so your crisis management team must also be open to changing and reconsidering the plan regularly.

And with regularly, we mean reconsidering the plan on an annual basis. Talk to your crisis management team so you can all discuss what changes took place and what are the steps that you can improve or change so that your crisis management team

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