Crisis Management

What is crisis management?

In the context of a disaster, crisis management refers to the control and supervision of recovery activities and personnel involved in the recovery. In fact, there needs to be a team of senior staff responsible for making key decisions such as declaring a disaster, preparing statements for the public and partners, mobilizing recovery teams, and ensuring that the business continuity plan is executed as it was intended.

Crisis Management Team

There needs to be Crisis Management Team.  This team ideally has members from senior management, business units, and includes the business continuity coordinator.  This team is responsible for overseeing the execution of the plan in an orderly and timely fashion.

Here are some goals of the crisis management team:

1. Execute the business continuity plan, emergency response plan, and crisis communication plan.

2. Ensure the safety of employees, visitors, and community in general

3. Coordinate efforts with external safety authorities such as police, fire, ambulance

4. Offer any special support to employees or their families if needed

5. Make decisions during the crisis, such approving expenses for extraordinary activities

The Crisis Management Team typically consists of a number of key members including a crisis management team leader, communications representative, legal representative, business continuity coordinator, safety team leader, technical recovery team leader, finance representative, etc.

The crisis management team leader is the most important. They are normally a senior manager, such as a CEO and they are responsible for the organizations response to emergency or disaster, declaring the disaster, and initiating the organization’s business continuity plan. He or she makes any final company policy decisions.