CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Is your organisation adequately prepared for a crisis?  

Non-routine interruptions or crises, can have a catastrophic effect on the operations, financials and reputation of an organisation. Crises such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic leading to illness of key staff, major fire by lax safety culture, or communication systems failure, could make it near impossible to the continuation of normal business activities.   

All potential crises can be mitigated with a thorough and robust plan which could minimise any potential impact before, during and after an incident, to your organisation. 

'Fail to Plan = Plan to Fail'  

The following methodology should be considered when producing the plan:

• Identification -  What are the potential crises that could affect your organisation? 
• Establish - How does your organisation intend to minimise the risks of such crises occurring? 
• Explain - How will your organisation react if a crisis occurs? Incident management, levels of response, decision making and communications;
• Scenario Testing -  As the threat landscape can continually evolve, so must the response mechanisms of your organisation.  

There are many possible events that might constitute a crisis within your organisation, these will be relative to the type of business you are in, the geographical locations of your business and human/organisational/social/technical and economical factors.

• Pandemic or Disease Outbreak - COVID-19 has tested the robustness of many organisations ability to continue normal business routine;
• Natural Disasters - for example, flooding caused by heavy tropical rainfall or earthquakes;
• Theft, Vandalism or Sabotage - Human choice to thieve client personal information or your organisation's intellectual property, could prove devastating. Similarly, vandalism or sabotage of equipment, could not only be costly but also pose health and safety risks;
• Social Breakdown - An external factor quite relative with the current COVID-19 pandemic;
• Fire - Few other situations have such potential to physically destroy a business from top to bottom;
• Power Cut - Inadequate power in order to run communications systems;
• Computer failure - Viruses, attacks by hackers or system failures could affect your organisation's ability to work effectively;
• Terrorism -  Risks to your organisations staff and business operations, either where your business is based or in locations to which you and your staff travel to and from. Also consider whether an attack may have a longer-term effect on your particular market or sector;
• Restricted access to premises - how would your business function if you couldn't access your workplace - for example, due to a gas leak or burst mains water pipe?
• Key staff illness - if any of your staff is central to the running of your business, consider how you would cope if they were to leave or be incapacitated by illness;
• Crises affecting suppliers - how would you source alternative supplies?
• Crises affecting customers - will insurance or customer guarantees offset a client's inability to take your goods or services?

For more information about HWA's Crisis Management, email operations@horizonwestafrica.org or get in touch via the form below: