In this episode of The One Problem, Tessa Drayton talks about the importance of having a crisis management plan. No one expected a pandemic, and one that would last so long. Organizations with a crisis management plan, would find it easier to navigate these difficult and turbulent times.
Hi there. My name is Avil Beckford, and this is the latest episode of The One Problem. We know that there are tons of problems in the world, but why do you want to get overwhelmed? We're going to take them one problem at a time. Today, my very special guest is Tessa Drayton, a communications professional – specializing in crisis and risk management – who I met on LinkedIn. Over to you, Tessa.
Tessa Drayton
Good afternoon, everyone. I am Tessa Drayton, chief communication consultant and founder of TND Communications. Thank you, Avil, for that introduction. So today's problem that I'm going to present to you is the failure for entrepreneurs and small business (SMBs) owners to implement a crisis management plan within their business plan. Many times I've seen people focus on the mission statement, vision statement, the marketing, and the financial aspect of their business. All those are good, but they don’t focus on a crisis management plan.
And with the onset of the Pandemic, Covid-19, two years ago that started in 2020, I saw the need for people, more than ever, to implement a crisis management plan. A lot of us were taken by surprise and because we didn't have a plan, we didn't know how to respond accordingly. So a number of businesses collapsed within a few months.
Now, what exactly is a crisis? A crisis is a disruptive or unexpected event that usually threatens an organization, and all its stakeholders – those people that would have invested in your business. And the reason, or the importance of a crisis management plan is to basically provide a list of key contact information of what typically should be done, and what should happen in the event a crisis occurs.
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Tessa Drayton
Now, a crisis management plan has three phases. We usually focus on the pre-crisis phase where you prepare a plan, revise the previous crisis that would have occurred, prepare policies and examine standards, regulations, train employees, form a crisis team, define their rules and responsibility, and lastly, have periodic training and simulations to get everybody accustomed to their roles and responsibility. Nobody is taken by surprise when the crisis actually happens.
The second phase is communication. Now, our goal for communicating during a crisis is to provide accurate and timely information to all people, both internal and external audiences. We have to maintain or to build the organization's positive reputation, keep that maintained at all times. We are also to ensure that employees and management, external entities, including the media, most importantly, that they are regularly informed of what is happening, in the different stages of the crisis.
And lastly, we focus on the post-crisis, that is, recovery and resumption of business, how we coordinate with emergency teams to facilitate procedures needed to return to business as normal during the post crisis page. We also evaluate the successes and failures of what was done, of the response time during the crisis. And one of the things we can do is to conduct meetings to evaluate how the company and how individuals handled the crisis.
Tessa Drayton Talks About the Importance of a Crisis Management Plan
Tessa Drayton
How do we evaluate the effectiveness of the crisis management plan and the crisis management team? And how we can identify opportunities, of course to improve in the event the next crisis occurs, we're able to respond better. And lastly, Avil, the most important part is communication. Now, many times in the company, we focus on the crisis management plan, we put it together and that's it. What you want to do as an organization is to create a crisis response culture where you get everybody involved. Everybody is communicating. This is your role. And this is your responsibility.
This is regularly due to the status or, for example, supply chains, ensure that resources the company needs are still going to be met, maybe from a different supplier. In the event that you have that, you're involved in a crisis. But everybody, that's why I see the weak points is that there's not enough communication. It usually stays at management, but everybody down to the cleaner needs to know this is how we're going to respond. Have a crisis ready call. You don't just leave it as a crisis management plan and dust it out from time to time. Get all the people and stakeholders involved because communication is what is going to keep that organization going during the crisis.
Tessa Drayton
How do I respond to employees? How do I communicate to my customers and my other stakeholders during the crisis? Over to you, Avil.
Avil Beckford
Thank you so much, my listeners. They're going to like this. They're going to like this because there's lots of good stuff inside that they can actually use.
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