Mia
Cyberattacks, natural disasters, operational disruptions, and workplace violence. On average, critical events cost businesses $350,000. Our experiences during the COVID-19 outbreak have taught many lessons. Despite their best forecasting and planning efforts, business leaders must be prepared to respond to critical events that threaten their business objectives and the continuity of their goods and services. The term “critical event” does not always refer to a full-blown natural disaster, but can also be used to describe the initial phases of a simple incident or operational disruption.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and the vaccine rollout continues at varying speeds across the globe, organizations find themselves at various stages of the crisis event management lifecycle.
Critical events are extending beyond natural disasters and physical security threats. Among the top risks identified by business leaders were cyberattacks, data breaches, and outages caused by telecommunications. All organizations no matter their size need to develop a proactive and efficient Critical Event Management plan.
CEM is a priority for leadership
Along with the rapid change in digitalization of a business process, senior management is looking at Critical event management as a priority. In the process of preventative support, the response to critical incidents can be significantly increased.
The business leaders are under pressure to change to be more agile and deliver sustainability so they must rethink their critical event strategy and prevent attacks from occurring.
As your business operates in a different environment than before, many teams are now working from home, and business leaders need to consider how to respond to the new challenges.
Prescriptives and predictability is the key
Maintaining regular risk management is imperative for any organization. The companies need to develop a plan that can make a critical event predictable and prescriptive to ensure your global crisis management program empowers local teams.
This will enable your team to make efficient decisions and take action on time. Critical event management needs to be effective, and evaluating practices provides opportunities for organizational change. Create a set of indicators that can be adjusted to changes in the business environment.
Addressing the challenges
When developing critical event management plans, it is essential to understand businesses’ core pain points. Since it’s essential for the senior leadership team that’s going to drive the initiative, they should start with a value proposition for the organization. List down painful experiences in the past to assign roles for the right personnel.
Business leaders need to focus their efforts on preparation to manage critical events better. To address these challenges, plans and policies must be developed and communicated, a risk assessment must be conducted, as well as tests conducted to ensure all personnel and stakeholders understand initial response plans and recovery plans. Instead of hoping and guessing for the best outcome, a robust critical event management platform that removes the guesswork and assumption can provide a better solution.
Since companies are in different phases of responding to the outbreak, the impacts vary by geography and industry. Recognizing how uncertainty affects the people who drive the organization during a crisis is crucial.
In every action they take during a crisis, resilient companies express empathy for the human side of the upheaval, considering the health of their coworkers, arranging for extended school closures, and carrying the angst caused by life-threatening circumstances. Management who are resilient encourages their teams to remain calm and methodical no matter what happens. Priority should be given to safeguarding workers’ health and safety, followed by their economic well-being.
Conclusion
During this COVID-19 era, companies have undergone several changes, both big and small. There has been a steady evolution of a new complex/hybrid operating environment in which work-from-home is embraced and further remote infrastructure needs to be put in place to strengthen and secure it.
To embrace the changing business landscape and evolving operational risks, businesses will benefit from deploying a robust CEM platform. It will be necessary to manage critical events to maintain a competitive edge.
Zopoj’s Critical Event Management software is designed to fully integrate critical event approaches and best practices. You can also seamlessly integrate with your existing incident management application. Sign up today or request a demo to optimize your CEM process and minimize downtime costs.
