Mitigate organizational crises with a crisis management plan

What Is a Crisis Management Plan?

The business world is one such environment where even the slightest of unforeseen hazards can have detrimental effects on one’s corporate confidence and future. However, there is a way for companies to mitigate these risks. They can turn to a crisis management plan (also referred to as a survival strategy) in the event of unexpected business developments.

The use of a crisis management plan checklist helps to plan ahead and identify all potential threats in order to develop strategies to counteract them. It works in a similar fashion to how a business continuity management plan aims to ensure operations can continue with remaining resources after a disaster. Checklists also facilitate the exchange of information among the members of the crisis management team.

This article informs about the following topics:

1. What belongs in a crisis management plan

2. Crisis management planning with checklist

3. A digital tool for crisis management with checklist

What to Include in a Crisis Management Plan?

Before implementing the crisis management plan, it is necessary to ensure that all the specific risks are considered and the remedial procedures are prepared. Furthermore, to be certain of the viability of the plan, it should undergo testing. Once, the process is proved to be working, employees can be trained accordingly.

Tailoring your CMP requires following these procedures:

1. Selecting the crisis management team members.
2. Defining what the crisis actually is.
3. Developing monitoring and the identifiers of the crisis.
4. Designating those responsible for eliminating the risk.
5. Creating a plan of informing the employees of the hazard.
6. Establishing specific assessment criteria for the negative consequences of a hazard and identifying the response procedures.
7. Developing a social media strategy.
8. Regular testing and updating of the plan.

Apart from Crisis Management: Risk Management Plans

Whereas a crisis management plan is mainly aimed at minimizing the damage caused by unforeseen events, a risk management plan creates concrete measures to avoid such events from the outset. If the risk management plan is unable to contain a problem, the crisis management plan intervenes to cushion the negative impact on the company. In addition, a business continuity plan outlines what measures the company will take to ensure that the plan remains viable throughout the duration of the disaster. It does this by systematically deploying its remaining resources until the status quo is restored.

How to Use a Checklist in Crisis Mangement Planning?

Not all crisis management plans are created equal. Although the details may vary depending on the preferences, capabilities, and resources of each company, the following points should be considered when creating a crisis management checklist:

1. Safety First

When a crisis occurs and the safety of employees is at risk, a good company will be prepared to sacrifice productivity and profits for the safety of its employees. This includes, for example, flexible working arrangements when the risk of a viral infection threatens the lives and health of those who commute into the office or workplace, as seen with Covid-19. Although some organizational functions may be affected by the new regulation, proactive companies put the safety of their employees first. However, if they are adequately prepared with a company crisis management plan, they can expect to survive the disaster whereas many of their competitors will not.

2. Live Transparency

When a crisis arises, employers are well-advised to communicate the situation honestly, clearly, and effectively to their employees rather than trying to cover it up. Employees want to be able to trust their superiors and managers and, therefore, feel that they are privy to all the details of an organizational crisis, especially if they may end up being directly affected. If companies are honest with their employees, especially in crises, it will pay off in the form of greater trust in management and executives which, ultimately, will be reflected in the way they carry out their day-to-day work.

3. Not to Speculate

Companies that choose to keep crisis details vague, if not completely hidden from their employees, leave room for speculation. Undermining trust almost always casts a bad light on the company, but a good company considers it necessary to keep its employees informed to prevent rumors from arising in the first place. Creating a culture of open communication will consolidate trust and promote productive cooperation between teams.

4. Communication with Customers and Stakeholders

Regardless of whether a company is facing an internal or a global crisis, customers and stakeholders expect clear and honest communication. Even when it might seem like there’s not enough time in the day to put out the fires that keep popping up, you must still always maintain an open line of communication between customers and stakeholders as to their commitments and about the company’s status.

Solve Crisis Management Issues With Digital Checklists

The focus on safety and productivity is the key to achieving and maintaining successful operations—even in a crisis. With Lumiform’s mobile app and desktop software, managers and key stakeholders can create effective crisis management plans using checklists to minimize the impact of different types of crises.

Digital checklists facilitate the implementation of preventative measures from a crisis management plan. All data is immediately available to the entire crisis management team. In this way, problems during implementation are immediately detected and immediately corrected.

With Lumiform, managers and executives benefit from the following advantages when planning:

• With the flexible form construction kit, adjustments can be made to the checklists again and again.
• The digital platform facilitates the frictionless cooperation in the team.
• Real-time updates about the implementation of the corrective or preventive measures. In this way, crisis measures can be continuously optimized based on the data obtained.
• Actions can be assigned to the appropriate personnel with priority levels to ensure that the crisis management tasks are completed on time and nothing is overlooked.
• The automatically generated reports can be sent immediately to customers and stakeholders.

To make it easier to get started in crisis management with a checklist, we have put together several templates that can be adapted at any time to the individual needs of the company.