Crisis Management

At some time or another most businesses, whether large or small, will face a crisis that threatens their operations, their people, their income, and if managed badly, their very existence. Those companies that already have in place and regularly exercise a crisis management plan are known to be significantly more resilient to sudden shock.

In our view it is essential that every company has a well-developed crisis management (CM) capability, one able to deal confidently with all the internal and the public facing issues, while successfully managing relationships with stakeholders, including law enforcement agencies, politicians, media, regulators, affected family members, and suppliers etc etc

Given their experience in CM planning for major telcos and a national central bank, Assured-GRC people are uniquely placed to be able to guide their clients in developing a CM plan designed for their business sector. A typical crisis management plan will define the organizations policy regarding CM, highlight the crisis events most likely to affect that company, and establish the policies and procedures required to identify a given crisis at its inception, and manage it through to a successful conclusion.

A crisis often brings together every part of the modern business ecosystem and invariably impacts on a series of complex external and internal stakeholder environments. This is why we work with other external relevant agencies on a global basis, as needed.

When it comes to communications planning and incident response we work with Interel Group, whose ‘issue management’ focus and worldwide presence enables clients to develop crisis communications protocols and playbooks (as well as audit existing procedures) including media engagement, political and regulatory liaison and digital/social media response. These standard operating procedures can be tested and developed through its crisis simulation tools to deliver live risk registers of soft as well as hard factors impacting your business resilience. Training and direct delivery of communications and regulatory outreach, incident analysis and activation of third-party supporters and validators is also available in real time as required. This is delivered in partnership with Assured-GRC and is always followed up with a ‘lessons learnt’ exercise.

Once Assured-GRC and Interel have worked with a client to establish their business specific CM plan, we are able to provide on-going (typically annually) desk top exercises designed to test and improve that plan, sharpen the decision making processes of key players, and generally ensure that the client’s company is ready for the worst that can happen

Given that a company’s CM arrangements must operate with the authority of the CEO, an Assured-GRC representative will initially meet with that person or their designate to establish and document a precise remit, with outline timings. This will then be expanded into a project, where the most important deliverables are established in a logical order such that quite early on the customer can feel confident that they have some defenses in place.

Establishing a fully functional CM Top Team takes time, and it is only when the company faces (and survives) a real crisis that the investment becomes clear, so the early stages will require trusted relationships to be established between our people and the customer’s representatives.