Crisis Definition: A crisis is any critical incident that threatens or causes injury to people or a disruption of normal business operations; and/or, threat to the financial welfare and image of the organization.
What type of response will you have to a fire, an earthquake, a tornado, fatality accident, loss of key person due to health/accident, premise fatality, etc. The list goes on and on depending upon your type of business. Do you have a plan? Who will execute the plan? What are the available resources? Who can help when everyone needs help? Can your business survive a crisis?
Crisis Planning
All of our Legacy members have been evaluated through the Risk Management Assessment tool that we use within the Loss Control group. This process focuses on “benchmark” programs, policies, and programs for the identification of hazards, risks, and potential losses along with controls for these findings. Identification of Risk/Hazard is crucial to the control implementation and is a functional cornerstone of a successful member within the Legacy family.
Crisis Management is a key component of risk control. In the past several years major international companies have seen a severe impact to business success due to a crisis situation. Take Boeing for example – a software malfunction created two plane crashes with loss of significant life. International response was to “ground” a major line of airplane, force Boeing to answer for failures, and provide a proven corrective action. The result was reputational loss, customer confidence loss, reduction in order placement, and extreme cost of corrective actions. This is a public relations nightmare in addition to the financial impact. So, in a nut shell “What are you going to do when things go WRONG?”
Here are some key steps to consider when developing your own Crisis Management Plan.
- Establish the crisis management planning team
- Identify potential disasters or crises
- Conduct a vulnerability and/or disaster analysis
- Identify and prioritize critical business needs
- Assess and review internal resources
- Identify external resources
- Identify asset requirements
- Coordinate communication
- Develop the crisis management plan
- Write and distribute the plan
- Implement the plan
- Understand the obstacles.
If you need help starting or developing your Crisis Management Plan, the Legacy Loss Control team is available to help in the process. Please do not hesitate to contact us.
