A precise guide to Crisis Management

Crisis Management is gaining a lot of attention these days due to the pandemic we are facing globally. 

Now people are realizing its importance. But we must understand that it is not limited to a pandemic or an earthquake or any other natural calamity. 

A crisis is any situation that leads to chaos in an organization causing a disturbance in normalcy.

A crisis can be of any form and scale. It can be a financial crisis, man-made disasters, or a global recession. In every case, your business will draw adverse effects. 

Hence, we must be ready for any such situation and adopt crisis management techniques in the business. 

In this article, we will see what is crisis management, what are its stages, and its benefits. 

Crisis Management is a set of practices and methods of identification and solution of threads an organization and its stakeholders can face.

We live in a world of unpredictable, and any event can occur out of the boss which has a negative effect on the business on various scales.

So it is very important that each and every organization independent of industry and size should have a crisis management plan. 

It sometimes forces you to take immediate decisions in order to nullify the effects of an adverse event. 

Wikipedia defines Crisis management as

It is the process by which an organization deals with a disruptive and unexpected event that threatens to harm the organization or its stakeholders. The study of crisis management originated with large-scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980s. It is considered to be the most important process in public relations.

Basically, there are six stages: warning, risk assessment, response, management, resolution, and recovery.

Let us check them one by one. 

(1) Warning: In this state, we try to predict the crisis. Although it is very tough to do any kind of predictions some signs can be looked for as warnings.  

(2) Risk assessment: In this stage, the enormity of the situation assessed. The organization starts to figure out the effects of the crisis and how bad the situation is. 

(3) Response: After understanding the gravity of the situation, it is time to prepare a response.  In this stage, you and your team decide the steps you need to take.

(4) Management: In this stage, everyone who is involved comes forward to implement the plan created for the resolution. 

(5) Resolution: In this phase, all the plans are properly implemented. Everybody fulfills his duty to take control of the situation. And now we try to achieve normalcy back.

(6) Recovery: In this phase, the organization starts to work normally. Day to day operations start running as they were before and you can focus on our customers again. 

But crisis analysis is also a part of this phase. With this analysis, you can measure the loss and then recover them. 

Here are some benefits of having a Crisis Management Plan. 

In our daily lives, we are so busy that we almost forget that anything happens to us. “This can’t happen to us” is a common attitude. And then bad things happen when we are least prepared.

So when we keep talking about possible crises and crisis management then there is a constant awareness for it. People talk about it and discuss with each other. 

And when the real situation arises then it does not take you by a surprise. Your organization is ready for it as a whole.

And this awareness will avoid panic in the employees and other members of the organization. 

You actually reduce the seriousness of a crisis when you do proper planning and management. 

Once you have identified your vulnerabilities, you can take initiatives to reduce them. With this constant scrutiny, you can many times avoid the crisis.

Hence Crisis planning and management always keep you on your toes and you keep making yourself better and better to face such situations. 

And this process you discover the risks you face and eliminate them in that process. 

Arranging proper resources is one of the main tasks in crisis management. Hence you can use your crisis management team to gain resources by working for the community pre and post-crisis. 

Many times there is a deficiency of a well-trained crisis management team. And until the help reaches the damage it is already caused.

So when there is a real situation your team can play a vital role. And the community will bring food, funds, temporary shelter, and other resources. 

Crisis Management is not something that is very shiny and lucrative on normal days. Many organization refrains from investing in them.

But its true value appears when the crisis actually happens.

I hope I was able to do justice with the topic.

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