Surviving a Corporate Crisis - 100 things you need to know

Overview

7 out of 10 organisations that experience a corporate crisis go out of business within 18 months

• Recent terror attacks and increased risk are making senior executives progressively worried about their ability, if hit, to continue to function

• It’s not a case of terror attacks alone: natural disasters, lock-outs, strikes, major fraud, high-profile personal disasters can all be crippling

• How prepared are you? Do you have contingency plans? And how much confidence do you have in them?

8 key questions to ponder, for a start:

1 Could your business be vulnerable to an unexpected event, whether natural or man-made?
2 Would the sudden loss of staff/management resources cause disruption to the business?
3 Would your business suffer greatly as a result of prolonged and unexpected denial of access to its main premises?
4 Would general IT failure cause major problems to the business?
5 Is there a Corporate Crisis Management Plan to deal with the above eventualities?
6 Who is responsible for the Plan?
7 What is your role in the Plan?
8 Is the Plan ever tested?

What is this report about?

This report not only covers remedial action after the event but it also offers expert advice on preparation and planning so that, should a crisis occur, damage of every kind is limited as far as possible.

It guides you through the various stages of setting up a viable crisis response capability and provides answers to key questions that every CEO should want to ask – and that every Corporate Crisis Manager should be able to answer.

Content

Introduction
1 Starting at the beginning – crisis avoidance
2 Defining crisis management strategy
3 Command and control
4 Communications
5 Organising the media interface
6 Action teams/plans
7 Maintaining the crisis management infrastructure
8 Testing the state of readiness
Appendices

The author

Paul Batchelor is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Currently a Director of Professional Interim Management Services Limited, he has almost 20 years experience in senior roles in the UK retail financial services sector, recently specialising in internal audit, compliance, special investigations and risk management. Over a five-year period, he was responsible for creating, maintaining and testing the business resumption planning capabilities of a leading UK financial services group.

At a time when the threat to business stability has never been greater, he has drawn on this experience to produce a report that sets out the basic principles of crisis management for all businesses.