Many businesses have had to suddenly deal with a crisis, and without a crisis management plan in place, it is oh so easy to turn a crisis into a disaster. Making critical decisions under pressure is never a good idea, and this can often make the situation worse rather than better, which is why you should sit down with your managers and work out an effective crisis management plan to be used in the event something bad happens. Here are a few tips to ensure that your crisis management plan is indeed what it should be.

• Pre-Approved Crisis Management Communication – Rather than waiting until a crisis arrives, you should work out what your crisis communication strategies will be, and with calculated responses to a wide range of scenarios, no one will make any communication errors at a critical time. Once the list of possible responses has been drafted, they can all be approved by stakeholders, and should they ever be required, they are always close at hand.

• Define The Implementation Point – A crisis might slowly develop from a small error, gradually becoming more and more of an issue, so you do need to decide when a crisis management plan should be implemented. It’s not really wise to implement if the issue has not reached crisis point, and by defining what exactly constitutes a crisis, you can better make a decision on when to implement your plan. You can never underestimate the importance of crisis management plan, which would help limit the damage caused to the business in the event a crisis occurs.
• Detailed Contact List – Time is of the essence in most crisis situations, so you should have a comprehensive list of all stakeholders’ contact details and this should be given to everyone involved and should contain contact details for outside of working hours. Home and mobile phone numbers, email addresses and social media connections should all be included in the list.
• Compile A Detailed Action List – This should include what action is taken and, of course, who takes that action, and by creating departmental action lists, nothing will be overlooked. Make sure that individual staff members know exactly what they are responsible for, which will ensure that the right action is implemented by the right people. There are informative articles available online on what to do with PR in the face of a crisis, which make for interesting reading.
• Resource Planning – Certain people might require instant access to company resources on order to best deal with a crisis, items such as spreadsheets, flowcharts, contracts and network access. This needs to be covered if you are to deal with a crisis in good time, so decide what resources would be required by who and make sure they have access.

It will take several meetings to have covered everything, and with an effective crisis management plan in place, should the worst happen, you can minimise the damage caused to the company. It takes many years to build a good reputation, and that can be lost in a flash if a crisis is not properly handled.