Crisis Management, Crisis Planning & Communications

A crisis is any unforeseen event which puts the reputation or operational viability of an organisation or individual at risk. . In any normal SME (Small Medium Enterprise), there should be very few occasions in the company’s entire history where a crisis needs to be mitigated – if the ship is tightly run, anyway.

When a crisis does happen, it is often the result of an independent media organisation publishing something on-line that is either incorrect (to the detriment of you or your company), or an unusual news event has occurred and the media publish something on it (again, typically, on-line first) before you know what’s really going on yourself.

Whilst the first stage in preparing a mitigation strategy is to gauge the potential damage the story may cause, it is best to always consider the worst case scenario and be prepared. For businesses, it is CRUCIAL that every member of your team has pre-prepared messaging to avoid conflicting replies being given to any media organisations that try to pursue the story.

We do this by preparing a holding statement. The introduction to this course presents an overview of crisis conditions and teaches students how to craft and implement an accurate, clear and unambiguous holding statement.

The main core of this course is a special 3-chapter Crisis Management Simulation: Nostromo The Hong Kong Storm, Oil Spill and Effect on Our Company’s Operations.

Part A (Green Condition) – In the first part of a three-chapter live crisis management simulation, students will get to grips with a role-play sim where they are serving as the Communications Manager for Nostromo, a fuel oil company that is dealing with an impending typhoon which threatens its business operations in Hong Kong.

Part B (Amber Status) – Events move quickly in our crisis simlulation, as students try to respond to escalating events on the ground, dealing with media enquries whilst responding to the needs of internal employees and customers too.

(Part C (Red Alert) – Events take a turn for the worse as our company’s oil tanker experiences damage and local media are chasing us for a crisis response statement. Students learn how to handle a range of challenging situations, including It system difficulties whilst we try and attempt to orchestrate our crisis management strategy.