Commentary From Crisis Management Expert Edward Segal, Bestselling Author of the Award-Winning Book "Crisis Ahead: 101 Ways to Prepare for and Bounce Back from Disasters, Scandals, and Other Emergencies" (Nicholas Brealey, 2020)

Preparation is key for managing and recovering from a crisis. The importance of that crisis management best practice was underscored yesterday when President Joe Biden toured parts of Florida that Hurricane Ian ravaged. The category 4 storm damaged or destroyed many companies and organizations.

But like all best practices, some follow them, and others don't.

According to a new national poll, a substantial portion of companies where surveyed employers work has not practiced their response to three major types of crises. They include severe weather-related events, medical emergencies and exposure to illnesses, and assailants in the workplace.

These are some of the significant findings of Rave Mobile Safety's fifth annual Workplace Safety and Preparedness Survey that were released last week.

• A third of companies have never conducted drills or tested emergency plans for severe weather-related events.
• 37% of surveyed employees reported their organization has never performed drills or tested emergency plans for medical emergencies or exposure to illnesses.
• 34% of respondents were concerned about active assailants in the workplace, but 43% of employees said that their employer has never performed drills or tested emergency plans for these types of situations. 

"These findings show that employers need to take staff concerns into consideration so that apprehension and anxiety are mitigated and reinforce the overarching need for employees to know what to do in the event of an emergency," Todd Piett, CEO of Rave Mobile Safety, said via email.

What's At Stake

Business leaders who are complacent about their ability to respond to a crisis could put their organizations at additional risk when a corporate emergency hits.

"How a company responds to an actual crisis will reflect positively or negatively on its brand and will have a lasting impact on its customers. Management needs to not only be prepared for dealing with the crisis but [be] truthful to its customers by preparing a response in advance," Nancy Friedman, a customer service and crisis training expert, said via email.

"When a disaster occurs, your management and employees are on the front lines of customer anger and fury. That anger can go viral with not only media coverage but negative posts on social media," she observed.

 "More business is lost, and more brands are damaged due to poor service and response than poor product. When a crisis strikes, if that initial contact is not handled just right by your response team, your problems will get even bigger," Friedman predicted.

More Than A Box To Be Checked

"The biggest mistake I see companies make is [that] they view crisis planning as a box to be checked. They create a crisis plan, go through a crisis workshop or training, and then the plan collects dust on a shelf," Shannon Tucker, vice president of Next PR, said via email.

"Your crisis plan needs to be second nature, and that requires ongoing practice and fine-tuning. Does everyone know their role? How does their role in a crisis change as their job responsibilities change over time?" she asked.

"This sounds basic, but do you know where to find the crisis plan? In a real crisis, you won't have time to sort through emails trying to find a document. And worse, if the crisis is a natural disaster, you may not even have the ability to find it online, which is why printed physical copies is also imperative," Tucker advised. 

Putting The Plan To The Test

"Having a crisis communications plan but never testing its effectiveness or evaluating how it's used is like someone taking flying lessons exclusively in a classroom and never piloting a plane up in the air. You absolutely need to put it to the test to determine how well it's working," Nick Kalm, founder and CEO of Reputation Partners, a national strategic communications and public relations firm, said via email.

"When crisis plans are written and edited, they are done when the organization is not dealing with a crisis. For this reason, developing a crisis plan and not testing it via a drill is more of an academic exercise vs. a practical one. And, even the most thorough, well-written and actionable crisis plan around will benefit from the refinement and editing that takes place after a crisis drill puts it to the test," Kalm advised.

About The Survey

The survey was conducted in September 2022 by the independent research firm Researchscape. Respondents included 578 workers aged 18+ in the United States. To qualify for the survey, Rave Mobile Safety said workers had to have been employed by the same company for more than one year; work for a business with ten or more employees, and work from home fewer than five days a week. 

For this survey, the credibility interval is plus or minus 6% for questions answered by all respondents (the interval is larger for questions answered by fewer respondents), Rave Mobile Safety said.