If there’s one mistake that’s often made in our industry, it’s thinking of a crisis occurring as a singular, one-off event. Sure, it may have multiple consequences across several areas, but it usually all stems from the one incident. The building has caught fire, what do you do? Use the fire extinguisher if possible, call the fire department, evacuate yourself and other occupants safely, activate your CIMT, alert authorities and stakeholders. Phew – well it’s not easy but we’re getting through it.
But wait a minute - while you’re in the middle of doing all this it just so happens that someone has also hacked into your systems and stolen all of your customers’ confidential data. (Maybe they were the ones who set fire to the building as a distraction?) I don’t have time to deal with this, the building is on fire!
Okay, so you may have to be particularly unlucky to find yourself in a situation like that… but we do have a tendency to forget that just because one disaster is happening, it doesn’t mean that everything else suddenly stops. These past few weeks we have all been so focused on trying to battle COVID-19 that when something like one of the worst police fatalities in the history of Victoria happens, or over a hundred tornadoes kill over 30 people in the United States, it feels all the more shocking and unbelievable.
Even if a crisis starts off as a singular event, it is easy for it to spark the beginnings of other crises. COVID-19 started off as a health crisis, but has quickly escalated into an economic crisis (with record-high unemployment) and, potentially, a food shortage crisis.
That’s why we strongly advise training up a secondary Critical Incident Management Team (or ‘B Team’) for your business. This is especially crucial for crises which you may have to grapple with for a long period of time (such as the current pandemic), where the probability of another event occurring concurrently increases dramatically. But it’s also something we highly recommend having for any kind of crisis – if your CIMT Leader or Planning Lead is ill or unavailable on the day something happens (or you have two crises happen simultaneously), you absolutely need to have someone else ready to fill their role so that you can ensure your business has the necessary tools for a successful response.
We are currently offering specialised CIMT training designed to train up your secondary team, so that you can feel safer knowing that someone has you covered. Call me on 0417 160 120 or email allan@crisisshield.com.au for a chat on how we can help prepare and protect your business to survive for better times ahead.