What is a crisis management plan?
A crisis management plan is a pre-built strategy to help your team prepare for unforeseen problems or challenges. The purpose of a crisis plan is to lessen the impact of these events on your workforce and your business operations. Used effectively, your crisis plan properly trains your team for the unexpected so that recovery is easier and more efficient.
Effective crisis management involves multiple steps and is a collective team effort. Make the process easier by breaking down each step into a series of tasks that you can assign to different specialists. This ensures that no one person is overwhelmed by the response to a crisis.
Establish your crisis management team. Determine who is best suited to serve as crisis management leaders and invite them to collaborate on the best response. Make sure each selected leader understands their roles and expectations so that there’s unity and collaboration right from the start.
Conduct risk assessment brainstorming sessions. Invite each team leader to share thoughts and ideas about various risks that could impact the business. Consider using a tiered system to assess the likelihood of those risks and the net effect on operations so that you can build the proper crisis response plans.
Plan your crisis response strategy. From your list of risks, map out the tasks that must be taken to respond to that particular threat should it occur. Create a task management board to organize your response and build your crisis plan strategy.
Finalize your crisis response strategy. Share the master crisis plan with your crisis management team and any relevant stakeholders for approval.
Review and update the plan accordingly. You may need to update your crisis management plan to keep up with changing conditions. Consider adding a task to your board to conduct an annual review of the plan so that it remains relevant and effective.
When to use the crisis plan template?
There’s an old crisis response saying: “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” The purpose of a crisis response plan is to be prepared for unforeseen challenges that threaten the security of your business. Your crisis plan template is a useful resource to help your team train for the unexpected so that the impact of such an event is contained.
Here are some examples of when you can use your crisis plan template to protect your business interests.
Before a crisis occurs: The ideal time to start using your crisis plan template is before you find yourself in a crisis. If you’re a project manager, consider beginning to build your crisis response strategy before work begins on new projects. This allows you plenty of time to assess internal or external threats to your project and establish the proper response strategies well ahead of time.
When a crisis arises: Obviously, when a crisis does emerge, you have to go into response mode. Your crisis plan template will help you manage tasks to respond to those events in real time. You can log, assess and address each threat promptly while using your template to share continuous updates with your team.
After you resolve a crisis: Learning and evaluating a recent crisis response strategy helps you make improvements against future challenges. A post-crisis assessment helps you evaluate what went well and what didn’t. You can make updates to your crisis plan using the lessons learned from existing response protocols and implement improvements.
How to use your crisis plan template
Your crisis plan template helps you identify, coordinate, communicate and resolve all critical aspects of a crisis response strategy. Used effectively, your crisis plan template will help you respond to challenges, roadblocks and unforeseen threats in an efficient and adaptable manner.
Step 1: Create the crisis response workflow
The template comes with pre-built vertical sections that map out the crisis response workflow. Organize your crisis management strategy by labelling each section as a stage in your response. For example: Crisis Identification, Response Coordination, Communication, and Resolution. This way, you can manage all the tasks of an effective crisis response plan and create stakeholder alignment using one centralized, visual project board.
Step 2: Assign crisis response tasks
Once you have your sections, you’re ready to create tasks. You can create a new task by clicking the + in any board section.
As you create your tasks, think about what stage of the crisis response to which those tasks belong. For example, if you’re creating a task to assess the crisis impact or to gather early information, those tasks belong in the Crisis Identification section. On the other hand, a post-crisis review or updates to your crisis response framework belong in the Resolution section.
Step 3: Create checklists for each task
Under each task, you can create checklists to describe all the requirements necessary to complete each task. This gives each crisis response manager additional clarity so they fully understand how each task will help resolve the crisis. Checklists are also an effective way to document every detail to successfully complete your crisis management strategy.
Step 4: Maintain communication on the task
Add attachments or links to relevant documents to provide additional context on the crisis management plan. You can also tag team members in task comments using the @ function to share any updates or feedback as the project progresses.
Step 5: Monitor and update
Your crisis response plan may need to change as new challenges arise or new technologies allow you to implement a response more effectively. Use a post-crisis evaluation period to review your crisis management plan and make any necessary updates.
