E-BOOK

Is Your Organization Truly Prepared for a Crisis?The Importance of Drills and Exercises In Critical Event Management

Table of Contents

Why Practice Is Essential to Critical Event Management 3

The Role of Communications 7

A Real-World Example 10

Best Practices for Preparation 12

Making it Happen: The Modern CEM Platform 13

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I hear...I forget.I see...I remember.I do...I understand.

— CONFUCIUS

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Critical Event Management: Why Is Practice So Essential?Crisis is defined by unpredictability. So how do we prepare for it? Ask the experts — military, first responders in police and fire, FEMA managers, international relief workers, corporate and facility resiliency managers — they will all tell you the same thing: Achieving better outcomes requires regular and realistic practice.

Specifically, it’s imperative to ensure everyone in your organization is familiar and comfortable with the actions they will take and the supporting systems they will use during a critical event. To achieve this, organizations must:

• Conduct updated training throughout the year.

• Practice using your emergency systems on a regular basis.

• Brainstorm potential crisis scenarios that include a variety of dynamic conditions.

• Run drills and exercises to simulate those critical events.

• Review and analyze your performance in order to improve.

• Update your response plans and training.

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What is critical event management?

A critical event is a disruptive incident which poses serious risk or threat to people or assets. Critical event management (CEM) gives an organization or emergency management team the capabilities to manage critical events — and protect people, assets, and operations.

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What’s at Risk?

Without regular training, drills, and exercises, a critical event poses an enormous threat to your organization. One huge risk is widespread confusion. Critical event management is dependent upon a well-developed plan that is communicated clearly to every member of the organization and practiced consistently. Otherwise, your organization is at risk for many potential consequences.

For example:

• Your people might not understand their role in the crisis plan.

• Your supply chain doesn’t get the message and becomes disrupted.

• Customers aren’t informed of changes to product availability, leading to frustration and decline of sales.

• Profit margins shrink.

• Your organization gains a negative reputation in the media.

• Investors become dissatisfied.

The Relevance of Practice

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Un-validated or outdated plans, procedures and documentation

Untested equipment and systems

Failure to learn from your own and others’ experiences

5 Leading Root Causes of Response FailureIn examining the underlying causes of response failure, leading crisis management expert Dr. Steven Goldman of MIT has found five key patterns:

Poor communications practices

Untrained people and teams

What do these all have in common?Lack of Practice.

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The Benefits of Regular Practice

Ongoing systematic training gives you the ability to minimize risk while simultaneously maximizing the resilience of your organization. Due diligence in creating and thoroughly rehearsing your crisis plan ensures the protection of your people, places and property during a disaster. This, in turn, ensures business continuity.

Through the process of simulating a critical event and rehearsing your crisis plan, you can:

• Identify weaknesses, gaps and areas for improvement before a crisis occurs.

• Substantiate your critical communications plan and program.

• Validate equipment and systems, demonstrating money well spent.

• Train responders, improving their competence and inspiring their confidence.

• Build teamwork within your organization.

What can we do about it?Minimize Risk.

Maximize Resilience.

The End Result:

Excellent recognition, visibility, trust and respect for your organization

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Communication is Key Dr. Goldman’s Basic Model of Communication:

It is Information Out/Information In. Each of these is not always easy. But in between is the Transfer Medium. This is your means of delivering the information. And this is where the window of possibility for confusion is wide open. How will your message be delivered? Is everyone in your audience getting the same take-away? Or have you left too much open to interpretation? Review the following common communications problems and ask yourself if you’ve considered all of these issues.

Information Target

Information Source

Transfer Medium

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Sound familiar?

Common Comunications Problems Often, misunderstandings occur due to:

• Overly complex technology

• Lack of training

• Cultural insensitivity

• Inappropriate content

• Confusing wording

• Cognitive dissonance

• Incomplete audience analysis

• Poor timing

• Misleading contextual clues

• Lack of message focus

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“ They thought it would take them twenty minutes. It took them over two hours.”

MIT’s Director of Crisis Courses, Dr. Steve Goldman, in reference to a consulting client. Dr. Steve had the PR team run a real-world simulation of notifying the news media about an important event. The communications team had assumed this would be a simple task, but in reality, the media outlets posed many follow-up questions and the process took much longer than expected. The PR team quickly realized expectations and reality did not match.

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Discordant Decision-Makers: • CEO and SVP of Administration: Agree that

is the policy.

• SVP of Operations: Bluntly states he will not follow that policy.

• Chief Information Officer: Wonders why the policy is necessary.

• SVP of Finance and a few other Execs: Surprised — they were unaware the policy even exists.

Another Real-World Example...Imagine this:

In a spokesperson training session for senior executives at a large organization. Training begins with a review of the corporate policy for releasing information to the media during a critical event. The policy states:

“We will release emergency information to all media and to the public clearly and accurately as soon as possible.”

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The Resolution: Hear. See. Do.After a heated discussion, Dr. Steve stopped the session, explained the policy and why it was necessary. This included outlining the need for clear, accurate and timely communications during a crisis:

“We need a united front. People’s lives and the survival of the company depend on this.”

He cited the ramifications and discussed the negative experiences of organizations that failed to adhere to this policy in the past.

Now the executives understood the policy and the need to communicate it throughout their organization.

With everyone on board, the policy was implemented and the training proceeded successfully.

Key TakeawayWithout this training opportunity, the decision-makers wouldn’t have been on the same page, leaving them exposed to numerous threats and the potential to go from bad to worse during a crisis. Instead, they now have a united front.

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Beating the Odds: Best Practices for PreparationTaking those common communications problems and our real-world example into consideration, we see that people often assume things will go more smoothly and quickly than they do in reality. So how can you improve your response?

Practice and improve your actions before a crisis strikes. Use training, drills, and exercises to uncover the gaps and misunderstandings in your plan.

01. ClassroomTraining/Orientation: Deliver efficient group training sessions.

02. Individual Skills Training: Verify each individual understands their specific role: Crisis Team Leader, spokesperson, department head, government liaison, etc.

03. Department Drills: Foster teamwork and coordination.

04. Tabletop Drills: Provide visual overview of the big picture.

05. Company-Only Drills/Functional Exercises: Take time to work out the kinks internally.

06. Full Scale/All-Hands-on-Deck Exercises: Put all the pieces together internally and externally.

Have you considered Time, Frequency and Conditions?Make sure to plan for a variety of scenarios that combine differing factors, such as simultaneous events with escalating damages. (For example, A workplace violence event in the data center leads to the building evacuation and subsequent IT network shutdown.)

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Making It Happen with Modern TechnologyIn today’s world, no crisis plan is complete without the advantages of technology. A critical event management platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) gives you the ability to enact best practices, while negating common communications problems. This solution should be used both to practice for the critical event, as well to manage it while it unfolds. One of the key capabilities of CEM is critical communications — the messages and alerts sent and received during a crisis.

With a critical communications system you can:

• Alert and update those who need to know.

• Inform key audiences quickly and accurately.

• Provide emergency information and instructions.

• Respond quickly to rumors, bad news and changes.

• Utilize appropriate available technology.

• Protect an organization’s assets, both tangible (people, places and property) and intangible (reputation, brand recognition and intellectual property).

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Be Sure to Put Your Critical Communications System to the TestA modern CEM platform equipped with critical communications gives you the ability to ensure everyone is on the same page. By incorporating a critical communications system into your crisis management plan and training exercises you can:

• Assign your crisis leadership hierarchy.

• Designate your response position staffing.

• Verify all contact information is current.

• Ensure all staff can communicate with each other.

• Conduct quarterly drills, including normal workday, after hours, weekends and holidays.

• Conduct a full-scale exercise.

• Review your response to determine areas for improvement.

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Key Drivers of Critical Event ManagementSpeed.

Relevancy.

Usability.

The Advantages of a CEM Platform equipped with Critical Communications

• Two-way Communications: See in real time who has received your messages and hear back from them.

• Safety and Logistics: Find resources located near people who require assistance and relay that information to them.

• Redundancy: Communicate reliably — when one system goes down, you have multiple backups.

• Efficiency: Reach all your people, all at once, instantly.

• Specificity: Pre-create as many different messages for particular contact groups as you need (employees, supply chain, media, etc.)

• Target-Capability: Set your alerts to reach only those people in a given geographical sphere of impact.

• Preferences: Reach everyone via their preferred device, language and modality (voicemail, email, text, push notification or desktop alerts), anywhere in the world.

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Without practice, you don’t know what you don’t know.

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OnSolve® Can Close Critical Communications and Risk Intelligence GapsThe OnSolve Platform for Critical Event Management combines Risk Intelligence, Critical Communications and Incident Management into one SaaS-based global portfolio. Our AI-powered platform is purpose-built to deliver fast, relevant and actionable intelligence and enable vital communications for crisis management professionals. When business continuity is your priority, OnSolve has your solution.

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Learn how OnSolve Critical Communications can help you protect your people, places and property.

Request a demo today.

Special thanks to:

Dr. Steve Goldman

Director, Crisis Courses, MIT

Goldmans@MIT.edu

Crisis Management & Business Resiliency Course: http://professional.mit.edu/cm

Advanced Business Resiliency Course: https://professional.mit.edu/course-catalog/advanced-business-resiliency