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Crisis Management In The Media

CRiSIS Planning And Media COMMUNICATION EXPERTS

The Drill’s crisis management consultants make news headlines: Part of our crisis planning ethos is to try to help businesses shape the developing narrative via judicious media and stakeholder engagement, to take crisis-hit companies from unsafe ground to safer terrain.

Also, when crises break, media journalists/producers often ask Drill experts - all crisis management specialists - to offer insights and observations to boost understanding of the crisis communication issues at play. Our experts have vital international and hands-on crisis management consultancy expertise, which is transferred into our crisis management planning tools and crisis software.

Drawing on years of frontline crisis management consultancy, Drill staff enact crisis fixes and crisis solutions to help businesses overcome their PR and operational problems. Your crisis response plans can be improved just by reading some of the articles below, featuring our proprietary approaches and methodologies for crisis management puzzles. The articles do not constitute specific advice or counsel, but we believe their principles to be, without guarantee, thought-provoking! So when you’re ready for better crisis management planning or preparation, call us.

We hope you enjoy the read.

Four ways simulations protect business continuity and jobs

A recent Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) survey revealed that 53% of CEOs said they had no dedicated crisis planning or cyber resilience plans in place; this despite cyber attacks costing Aussie businesses over $40billion in damages every year. 

Most commonly, too many companies seem to have precious little in the way of risk management, compliance risk or issues management plans in place prior to being ambushed by the increasing array of crises, especially the cyber attacks and data breaches so prevalent today.

But there are four compelling reasons that crisis simulations - crisis training and rehearsal sessions using crisis training technologies - can minimise the impact on your brand and your career, and stop the horrific business interruptions and losses of having inadequate crisis management plans - or none at all:

Preparedness: Crisis simulation is an essential tool to get organisations more ‘crisis ready’. Simulations allows organisations to identify potential and likely crises, test their crisis management plans, and practice their roles and responses for specific situations. By running crisis training workshops, organisations can identify weaknesses in their response plans and take steps to address them before any real crisis occurs.

Risk Mitigation: By simulating crises, firms can identify potential risks and develop risk management strategies to mitigate them. This could include compiling a risk register, identifying potential crisis stakeholders, drafting communication strategies and crisis templates and developing contingency plans that will be enacted if and when crises hit. By proactively addressing possible risks, you can reduce the likelihood and impact of any crisis.

Training: Crisis simulation provides valuable training for personnel. Through realistic and real-time simulations, staff members develop critical thinking, rational decision-making, and problem-solving skills that can be applied in real crisis situations. Crisis management rehearsals also provide an opportunity for staff members to practice working collaboratively and effectively under pressure. This type of training can help ensure that any crisis response team is well-prepared and capable of responding, en masse, to a real crisis.

Finally, crisis simulations can provide valuable learning and development opportunities for personnel. By participating in crisis simulations, staff members discover how their peers and fellow professional perform under pressure and, also, who has different attributes that best serve the crisis response effort.

With a shared mission for resolving crises, staff find co-operation and collaboration are essential to enacting both the crisis response efforts and the business continuity activity. Crisis responses often drain company resources, so teamwork is essential to fix the problems presented by the crisis and to help companies to keep delivering business-as-usual. This is the foundation of business continuity.

In closing, the goal of crisis simulation is to get employees ready to handle the adverse impacts of a crisis. If your organisation does the crisis simulation well, you will also build employee resilience and confidence and, so, protect your ability to keep operating and trading.

Gerard McCusker