A crisis does not always impact during working hours. Nevertheless, many companies fail to take this into account when setting up a chain of command. Does your team know where their responsibilities start and end if something occurs outside of work hours or during the holidays? Do they know who to notify?
Making sure you’ve notified the right people at exactly the right time is crucial when it comes to crisis management. Unnecessary stress and confusion can negatively affect and delay the whole process. It is in these types of situations that you can reap the benefits of utilising a digital tool for emergency preparedness and crisis management.
Establish a clear chain of command
Having an unclear chain of command can be very confusing and cause panic. If your team doesn’t know who to call, they might notify the wrong people, or they’re notifying everyone! This can create unnecessary obstacles whilst managing the incident.
Bear in mind, emergencies are rare. Most people may only experience one or two serious incidents during their entire working life. The lack of frequency in combination with the fact that one cannot predict when events occur means therefore that the chain of command must be crystal clear.
Using old archive system with stacks of paper explaining the procedures is not acceptable. When the crisis occurs, there is simply no time to hunt for the right document or folder to find out who you should notify. In many cases, these files are so rarely updated that you will find it challenging obtaining the information you need. Therefore, it is vital to digitise business continuity plans, monitor critical issues and vulnerabilities and create automated emergency notifications
The emergency manager may not be able to resolve the incident, as they may be on holiday or simply might not be available at the time something disrupts. A solid system of established processes and workflows is crucial to provide everyone in an organisation, from top to bottom, with the necessary information.
Know where your responsibilities begin and end
Staff will have different tasks and responsibilities during a crisis. Typically, some will only be responsible for notifying and informing, while others must decide which countermeasures should be initiated and in this way be responsible for crisis management.
This type of decision may resemble standard management tasks, but without a reliable system, staff will not know where their responsibilities start and end. Establishing clear tasks and responsibilities will give your team the confidence to get the job done.
Can you realistically rely on an Excel spreadsheet alone to provide all the information needed to tackle a crisis? Although Excel is a useful tool for storing and organising large amounts of information, there are disadvantages to consider when using spreadsheets to navigate through a crisis. To begin with, lists in Excel are not updated automatically. Secondly, they do not consider important factors such as exercise, vacations or sick leave.
With a rota system, you can manage not only who is on the thread, but also the external factors that affect the person calling. Another advantage is that you can have several rotas. Even if an incident occurs locally, you can notify and get help from other departments or offices.
This becomes especially important if you are affected by a major event that can take place in days, weeks, or months. Dealing with such incidents can drain your organisation of people power. With an updated digital support tool, you’ll be able to bring in extra resources from nearby offices and departments if needed.
To conclude, your staff need a system they can trust, a system they have access to all the time, where they get a step-by-step review of what they need to do. Make sure that all the plans and processes you have at your disposal are efficient and useful, so that you are proactive both on paper and in practice.
An event can occur anytime, anywhere. Be prepared!
