Top questions to ask to improve crisis readiness

By Harald Axelsen, the in-house crisis management expert for leading H&S SaaS, EcoOnline, sums up the vital questions businesses should ask to be primed and ready for a crisis. He outlines what needs to be locked down, and how to ensure the whole business is on message and ready to face the flak when it comes.

Improving crisis management should be front of mind for banking and finance leaders in our current age of uber-uncertainty. From spyware infections[1] inside 10 Downing Street to revelations of bullying at accountancy firms[2] Deloitte and KPMG, news regularly breaks alerting the world of corporate mishaps, IT malfunctions, and health and safety compliance failures leading to businesses and employees being put risk.

With the added complications of geopolitical upheavals, volatility on stock markets, skills shortages and supply chain blockages, no business can claim to be risk-free in 2022, so we’re likely to see many more crises unfolding in the coming months.

Here are the burning questions management teams need to ask, to improve their organisation’s crisis readiness. It’s important to think long and hard about these, because having answers will protect employees and customers, and safeguard an organisation’s future operations and brand reputation, no matter what life throws at it.

Who exactly will do what exactly?

Make sure you’ve accurately defined roles and responsibilities, and carefully assigned who does what, where and when. I’d also recommend putting in place back-up, alternative roles, in case key people are absent or elsewhere when a crisis breaks.

Produce Action Cards, which are tools that help your team members follow logical pre-defined steps in response to an incident. They are operational versions of your contingency or crisis management plan, in the hands of the people in question.

Settle on the best ways to develop, manage and share crisis planning information across the organisation. Today most organisations aim for a digital system to manage their contingency plans, such as EcoOnline Crisis Management, but with all crisis management, you need to have a backup. That means having plans printed out somewhere, and made easily accessible to those who need it. Fortunately, most software systems that help pull the plan together also provide printing options.

How do I know the plan will work in the first instance?

Risk assessments are all well and good, but some experts feel they constrain crisis planning if not broad and bold enough. On the one hand it’s human nature to be optimistic and assume the worst won’t ever happen. But the reality of crisis management is that you must take a ‘worst case scenario’ view, and plan for high-hazard, low likelihood events.

A great way to be sure your planning will pay off is to carry out crisis management rehearsals. These can be run specifically to see if key people respond in the appropriate ways when the heat dials up. With a system in place, you can instigate a call out, see how quickly people react and complete their tasks – then shut it down. A number of clients we work with at EcoOnline have a training exercise like this once a month, or twice yearly.

Remember that practice doesn’t have to be a full-scale operation. Table-top exercises involving key decision makers are a cost-effective way of testing communications, technology and procedures. You can test expected emergencies – and unexpected ones too.

What needs to happen after 5, 15, 30 minutes?

Have a predefined agenda for checkpoints or status meetings that take place at set times during a live crisis. Decision makers must respond to particular prompts – for example, about communication with stakeholders, the status of equipment, or the spread of the crisis.

How will we avoid cognitive shortcuts and groupthink?

While you want a coherent team to know how to react and communicate in a crisis, you need to make sure groupthink doesn’t prevent people raising concerns, or the right decisions being made when the unexpected happens.

With this in mind it might be worth bringing in a new person to take a fresh look at the plans. If they are not invested in the original plan, they will be more likely to suggest a different approach if one is needed.

Flexibility matters

Fascinating schools of thought have built up around the psychology of planning. In particular experts warn of the ‘paradox of good planning’. You need to recognise when a situation changes for the worse, or new threats come to light, and be flexible enough to adapt as things evolve rather than stick rigidly to the original plan.

While we can’t stop every bad thing happening, a well-crafted crisis protocol can stop things escalating. Robust pre-event crisis management can save lives, jobs and companies. Time to check out your plans?