Pre-crisis actions and the drawing-up of plans
Before a loss or damage occurs, the company must draw up plans, collect any necessary information and appoint members to its crisis and recovery teams. The most crucial thing is that the company’s top management is committed to the project and communicates its importance to all parties involved. The management appoints a planning team whose members represent all functions of the company – at minimum production, IT, HR, finance, logistics and corporate communications should have their own representatives. In addition, maintenance, purchasing, marketing and warehousing representatives could also be invited to participate in the planning project.
Various types of analysis, such as Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and other risk analyses, can be used to draw up a business continuity and recovery plan. However, reality is often much more complicated, making it impossible to prepare for all possible situations. Instead, the company should draw up a framework for its crisis activities and define the processes that will enable it to handle a crisis in a controlled manner. The drawing-up of such plans as a joint effort also enables the participants to learn new things about the company, helping them in their everyday work.
An important task is collecting the contact details of all staff members. It should always be possible to reach all employees, even when they are on holiday or travelling somewhere. Another important element is communications and communications planning. It has been said that no crisis is so hopeless that it cannot be made even worse through bad communications. On the other hand, well-planned and well-handled communications can turn a crisis into a positive experience.
Actions during the crisis
Although the actions taken during a crisis are often more or less improvised, pre-defined lists and instructions save much time and help the company to make the right decisions. Actions during the initial stage of a crisis should be defined using, for example, a flow chart specifying the tasks and responsibilities of each organisational level. It is often reasonable to divide such a flow chart into local and group-level activities. The flow chart also defines at which stage local and group-level crisis management groups are summoned.
The crisis management group should keep a logbook in which it records all actions, contacts and decisions from the very beginning of the incident, as well as the date and time of each activity. All in all, crisis organisation is most likely to achieve satisfactory end results when the crisis management group stays calm and observes the pre-defined framework of actions.
Post-crisis actions and recovery
The acute crisis is followed by the post-crisis stage which can be divided into three sub-areas: emotional first aid, business recovery and learning from the crisis.
The company’s HR organisation is responsible for arranging physical and emotional first aid for personnel and acquiring professional resources for this as soon as possible. The business continuity plan should contain instructions on whom to contact for post-crisis debriefing. Most countries have specialist public-sector organisations for this.
The success of the business recovery activities will be decisive for the continuity of the company’s operations. The drawing-up of a recovery plan requires a profound knowledge of the company and its resources, including its human and financial resources. For this reason, only the company’s own personnel can draw up a successful recovery plan and define suitable recovery strategies for it.
The compilation of a recovery strategy should start by analysing the critical needs related to personnel, raw materials, machinery, warehousing and logistics, amongst other things. The critical times for each critical function, i.e., how long the company could manage without a specific function, should also be defined.
After this, the production processes and components should be prioritised and a recovery strategy drawn up for each sub-area. A recovery strategy defines, for example, the following:
- What resources are needed in order to re-establish vital functions within the critical time?
- Is it possible to shift production to another unit?
- Does the company have extra production capacity?
- Is it possible to transfer personnel to another unit?
- If production or personnel is transferred to another unit, how will logistics, IT, overtime work and other such issues be resolved?
Dependencies constitute one of the key areas of a recovery plan. Dependency risks are evaluated at the risk appraisal stage, but the plan should also define how these matters will be resolved during a crisis. Dependencies can be divided into internal and external dependencies, and the production chain should be analysed in its entirety, from raw material and goods suppliers to logistics and customers. The company’s insurer, for example, can provide valuable expert assistance at this stage.
A crisis is always a valuable learning opportunity. All cases of loss or damage, even small ones, as well as near-miss situations ought to be analysed. The company should have a system for monitoring such incidents, enabling it to analyse whether the actions taken were correct and what could have been done better. This aspect is often forgotten in connection with loss or damage, although it should be part of any company’s regular quality work. The experiences gained from crises and other incidents should be utilised for training and other such purposes to make sure that the experience, which may have cost the company dearly financially, will benefit the entire organisation.
Communicating the business continuity plan and organising related training
When the business continuity and recovery plan is complete, the entire personnel should be informed about it via, for example, the company’s intranet. It is also important to arrange training in the implementation of the plan for the personnel. Furthermore, a designated crisis management team can be trained through case practices, enabling the company to verify whether the plan works in practice or whether, for example, certain parts of the plan must still be worked on, after which the improvements should be recorded in the plan. The plan and any enclosures attached to it should be updated on a regular basis. In this way, the business continuity and recovery plan will not only become a useful tool for the entire company but may prove vital for the company’s survival should it encounter a major crisis.
Lars von Hertzen
