Unplanned events can have a devastating effect on businesses. Crises such as fire, damage to stock, or IT system failure could all make it difficult or even impossible to carry out your normal day-to-day activities.
At worst, this could see you losing important customers – and even going out of business altogether.
All businesses should have crisis management plans in place for responding to crises and keeping people safe. Good planning can help to minimise the potential impact of a disaster and, in an ideal world, prevent it from happening in the first place.
However, when a crisis does happen, the restore and recover phase can last for some time and be very costly to the organisation. This makes it even more important to have effective business continuity plans to help get the business back up and running after a crisis.
Getting your business reputation back on track post-crisis
When the crisis is over, there is a temptation to let out a sigh of relief and return to normality. But there is still work to do to get your business’s reputation back on the road to recovery.
Reputations that have been built over many years can be severely challenged or destroyed in an instant.
Rebuilding that trust and recovering reputation can take time, months or even many years depending on the severity of the situation. This means that reaching out to stakeholders becomes even more important.
However, showing is more powerful than telling. You need to show stakeholders that performance is once again meeting expectations. Show them that your products are high-quality, that your service is top notch again, and that you’ve fixed any damage to your premises and equipment.
Looking after your people post-crisis
Corporate social responsibility in crisis management is more important than ever with the new ISO 22330 guidance for managing the people aspects of business continuity, states the importance of putting people first during a workplace crisis
The events can be one-off high impact incidents or involve lower impact events with repeated exposure that can have an impact on your employees wellbeing.
In the recovery phase following a crisis, business should offer some kind of counselling to help ease distress and prevent psychological burnout.
If an employee has suffered a physical or psychological injury then you need to ensure that treatment provided by the organisation is safe, effective and appropriate.
Recovering from a crisis
Depending on your business’ specific circumstances, there are many possible events that might constitute a crisis from natural disasters and theft to fires, power cuts, and IT system failures.
When your business is trying to recover from one of these crises you need to have robust plans in place to communicate with your stakeholders and get your business reputation back on track as well as working to restore faith in your business from those that matter.
A key consideration post-crisis is your employees. Your business is nothing without a strong team behind it. Looking after employees physical and mental wellbeing should be a part of your crisis management plans and your corporate social responsibility.
For all these reasons strong crisis management plans are a must for any organisation to keep their people safe and protect the reputation of the business.
If your company is after more in-depth crisis management training, take a look at our range of crisis management training courses and get in touch with our team for more information or to book a place.
