Friday, September 14, 2012

Management Training for Crisis

Crisis management training is the centre of crisis preparedness. All businesses and organisations need specific training to build a crisis response capability. Training reduces the potential for panic, chaos and confusion and focuses a crisis team on the components of a successful response. 

The objective of a crisis management workshop is to enable crisis management team members to understand the basic principles of crisis management and its application within the organisation.  A good program is designed to review the crisis management plan, team roles and responsibilities, threats and responses and should cover the following:

·      Crisis training objectives:  what the session will achieve.
·      Introduction to crisis - cause and effects:  definitions and examples.
·      Crisis prevention and warning systems:  actions to prevent crises
·      The value of crisis management:  the benefits of being ready - strategies for damage control.
·      Overview of the plan and manual:  walk through each element of the plan and clarify.
·      Crisis management team - roles and responsibilities:  what each role means and what that team member has to do.
·      Threat analysis:  where is the organisation vulnerable and what are the possible effects on the business?
·      Review response strategies:   work through checklists of response actions for each threat. 
·      Integration with outside resources:   review plans with emergency services, police, security, State disaster organisations, etc.  
·      Discuss how to communicate best with stakeholders, employees, customers, media, community, etc.
·      Technology and equipment:  where does the crisis team meet and what essential technology and equipment do they need? 
·      Log keeping and documentation:  confirm document control and efficiency program for retaining information.
·      Test and evaluate:   Using typical threat, team provides discussion on how they would respond to the crisis using the learnings.

Case studies of past crises provide important insights, background and experience. They give the team an opportunity to observe the way in which successful and unsuccessful crisis response has been handled, at the same time as evaluating how recovery was instigated.

The workshop in most cases should be first conducted at the organisation’s Head Office with the Crisis Management Team  As with all the training units in the crisis management plan, it should then be rolled out to regional and divisional business units, operations and sites.  In some cases at smaller sites, the workshop may involve teams of two or three people, but they can still carry out threat identification and the responses to their unique situation.

Don't leave crisis management training until after an event occurs. Get in front and do it now.