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Crisis is an exceptional and rare event. Are you prepared?

Our practice makes perfect - every day you face smaller and bigger challenges in your business. Some can be overcome quickly with focused energy, others require a lot of energy and execution force to master. At some point, there may just be a lack of motivation to get things back to normal quickly and with a lot of momentum. However, all special events have ééone thing in common: they move us forward, we learn from them, are usually made stronger by them, and may even have the chance to set ourselves up in a whole new way.

When the crisis team is convened because of a crisis, it has to make impactful decisions in the shortest possible time based on potentially incomplete information and high uncertainty. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the crisis team's roles within the company and the way they interact with each other do not match their usual interaction, as they do not meet and work together regularly in this constellation. In the case of an ongoing situation, this may also need to be done in triplicate. Business Continuity Management (BCM) and Crisis Management (KM) are therefore among the most important measures in the Crisis Management (KM). Contingency plans alone cannot cover all realële failure scenarios. The wise interaction of preventive BCM planning and its integrative use by a crisis team within the company and response teams guarantees success in an actual emergency.

Through regular &airway;practice, the members of your crisis team will learn how to handle stressful situations, secure important procedures, get to know themselves and others better, and how to react and act in a serious situation. You will illuminate your scope of action in a crisis situation and recognise contexts you may not have known before.

Because interaction and action in crisis situations is particularly relevant in practice, but also very demanding, Controllit AG offers the implementation of tailor-made crisis team training courses as a service. This allows you to take part in a professional and practical simulation and expand your wealth of experience with regard to defined processes, information flows and working techniques.

• Do you feel that your crisis organisation is already firmly in place?
• Do you know your role and your task in your crisis team?
• Does the cooperation of the interfaces with the crisis team have a positive effect on the entire company?

To show you what to expect in a professionally conducted simulation exercise, here is a brief insight into the conception and planning of a crisis unit exercise and how it is prepared. This means, including the preparation of the crisis team participants for their roles and areas of responsibility, the detailed planning behind the contents of a crisis team exercise and how the crisis team exercise is conducted and concluded.

Starting point

At the start, your company's crisis organisation should be in place and each crisis team participant in the company should know his or her function and area of responsibility. However, since the composition of the crisis team varies from company to company, it is advisable to orientate on internal know-how trusts, who can support the crisis team leader with their expertise in assessing the situation, help him/her prepare the decisions as best as possible and coördinate and monitor the implementation of the measures taken. Your in-house know-how will be complemented by feedback from external experts on crisis management.

The framework for the crisis management meeting is defined together with the company. Purpose, place, date and duration of the meeting are jointly determined. Furthermore, the scenario, the initial situation and particular changes in the situation as well as the organisational units and persons participating should be clarified. If external companies or organisations are also to be involved, longer-term planning is unavoidable. But the more intensive and detailed the preparatory work is, the more your crisis team will be involved in the scenario: emotionally and professionally. The reality of the situation gives rise to real emotions, which encourage participants to take the situation seriously and thus ensure that the experience is particularly valuable. A prerequisite for successful crisis management is knowledge of the content of your company's crisis documentation. Internalise crisis team protocol - crisis team members must know their area of expertise, their role, their challenges and the appropriate methods and tools for managing the crisis. To this end, a basic training or introductory course agreed with you will be offered in advance, familiarising participants with the content and functions of the crisis management team so that they feel well prepared and adequately trained in an emergency. The training content can also be provided to crisis unit members in the form of a theory input as a starter on the day of training, if required.

Whatever you want to achieve for the learning effect after the event, a professional event ensures that during the event, you will have the opportunity to test your technical resources (phone systems/switches, conference switching, PC/laptops, etc.), alarm management (rapid response, emergency response, etc.). You will also have the opportunity to test your technical resources (phone systems/switching, conferencing, PC/laptops, etc.), alarm management (rapid and correct assessment of the situation), information dissemination, infrastructure and the full deployment of the crisis management team or emergency response teams. At the latest after the training, you also ensure that each member is familiar with the crisis management room and its professional set-up, and that each participant knows his or her checklists and the structure and content of crisis documentation, such as the crisis manual, and how to use them.

Preparation for the crisis team exercise

The company is responsible for selecting the failure scenario (building, IT, personnel, service providers, production) for which a concrete throughput scenario is developed. The ideasën, tips or known challenges in the company are used, as well as the collected experience values of the consulting team, also with regard to the maturity level of the crisis organisation. Based on this, the detailed planning of the appropriate script takes place. Here, it is advantageous if your documents on the crisis organisation are made available to work on the company as faithfully as possible from the start. Most importantly, all members of the crisis team should be trained in the exercise and encouraged with fictional events at the right time. During the exercise itself, the direction team will control the stress level and planned events and increase or decrease the difficulty level.

In the playbook, the planned situation feeds are consistently described in order, along with the reële and tactical times, the recipient of the feed, the medium used for the feed (e-mail, phone, event card, etc.) and the expected response or outcome, and the main Übung content are documented. Moreover, it should always be possible to switch to other actions, because it is never known what decisions the crisis team will make in its situation and whether the situation should be tightened or eased by the management team according to the situation. In addition, all other injections (e-mails, telephone, messages on social media, newspaper articles, etc.) will be used in the event of a crisis.

As soon as the sequence of events is discussed and the timetable for the situation briefings fits, the crisis management exercises can be carried out.

Conducting the exercise

During the exercise, two groups act: the director team and the crisis team. The direction team monitors events and potential escalation with the staffing of director and deputy director, while crisis team members are responsible for de-escalation and management of the"crisis".

The direction team takes over the representation of the entire external world and simulates all contacts (client, reporter, employees, authorities, external contacts, etc.), while the crisis team takes over the representation of the entire external world.

With the increasing evolution of the situation based on the script, the crisis team is constantly confronted with new information and events, which it has to collect and analyse in order to make decisions, order appropriate measures and monitor their implementation. The aim of the crisis team is to get ahead of the situation and actively influence the crisis positively with its measures.

From experience, participants are quickly in their roles due to the reality of the situation and the stress level that has arisen. During the exercise, particular care is taken to ensure that no one sounds a false alarm and that the exercise is perceived as real by bystanders and the uninitiated.

During the exercise, at least ééone observer sits in the crisis management room. During the two- to three-hour effective training, the observer pays special attention to the style and rhythm of crisis team leadership.

Because the Übungalow of the crisis team für gewöhnlich takes place in a demarcated crisis team room, the management team works in another room. This makes it difficult for them to determine the situation and atmosphere in the crisis team. If the pace needs to be increased or decreased, the monitoring team gets a picture of the situation from the observer, either by handing over the recordings in person via a sign-in sheet or an act, or by media support via signs, so they can adjust the course of the situation accordingly.

Follow-up

The crisis need not be over in the meeting that concludes after two to three hours. However, it is advisable to have at least ééone positive intermediate outcome so that the crisis team can leave the meeting with a positive feeling of success. Everyone is under a lot of pressure and even small discussions or disagreements may have created internal stress in the situation.

This stress is communicated no later than the Hot Debriefing immediately and immediately after the meeting and should be reduced there. The hot debriefing is there to capture the emotions and sensitivities of the participants as soon as possible and, if possible, to include them as empirical values in the report.

The training isëvaluated using the observation protocols and feedback forms, various aspects are assessed and the final report is written. The emphasis here is on the optimisation potential of the crisis team. This is summarised in such a way that, in the end, easy-to-implement recommendations for improvement are drawn up and you are able to optimise your crisis organisation by taking small steps until the next meeting.

Through a professionally conducted crisis team meeting with a needs-based scenario, you will get clarity on whether the crisis team in the company has the desired know-how and is able to initiëren and implement the necessary measures. You also recognise your potential for improvement. In any case, you will increase the operational capacity of your managers, improve teamwork in this very special body and raise awareness of smaller and larger crises.

Does a crisis really come so unexpectedly now, or is your company prepared?

Questions

Crisis team definition: what is a crisis team?

A crisis team is a body of people within a company, organisation, etc. that is convened during a disaster or emergency to take the necessary steps to get the company through the difficult situation in the best possible way.

Crisis team composition: who is part of the crisis team?

A crisis team in the company consists of representatives from different business units who contribute their respective technical expertise to the crisis team's competences. The crisis team in the company can consist of a core crisis team (particularly suitable individuals) and an extended crisis team (technical experts).

What are the tasks of the crisis team in the company?

The tasks of the crisis unit in the company include analysing the current situation and anticipating future events based on the analysis. The different members of the crisis unit may have specific tasks within the scope of the crisis unit's work.

What are the tasks of the crisis unit leader?

The duties of the head of the crisis unit include making decisions after consultation with the crisis unit. These decisions should be taken by consensus. If consensus cannot be reached, the crisis team leader takes the final decision.