Crisis management entails dealing with crises in a manner that reduces damage and allows the affected organisation to recover quickly. Dealing accurately with a crisis can be particularly crucial for a company’s public relations.
Crises come in several types, and it is advised in all cases that a corporation be prepared with a crisis management plan.
Types of crises
There are numerous types of crises that require crucial attention to crisis management in mind:
Natural disasters: Natural disasters are usually environmental crises that are beyond human capability to prevent them. Earthquakes, storms, and floods are good examples of natural disasters.
Accidental disasters: Accidental disasters are those that occur inadvertently by human cause. Fire is one example of unanticipated catastrophes that can disturb the workforce and can create a lot of damage to the entire organisation. Particularly in areas such as mining and construction that involve physical labour and working of large machinery, severe accidents that can happen to the personnel in the execution of their duties can lead to severe consequences.
Technology crisis: A majority of activities in an organisation involve technology in one way or another. In some cases, a slight disturbance in a company’s technology structure can cause all processes to come to a stop. Some technology disasters can happen accidentally, while others can be malevolently created. Under technology catastrophes, you will find examples such as:
Malicious crisis – Criminal technology attack by rivals; aggressive employees with spiteful intentions of disrupting the organisation
Cybercrime attack – Intentional crime by technology
Critical virus attacks – Accidental or malevolently infected
Conflict of interest issues: A crisis involving a conflict of interest can be very complicated to handle as it entails political factors. It does not have a particular step-by-step guide, as such disasters tend to be distinctive each time. However, that does not indicate that there are no best methods and strategies that can be applied. Some incidents that would fall under a conflict of interest crises are:
Rumours: False reports about a company, its goods.
An example of this is spreading rumours that the goods of a specific company are unsafe or faulty. Bad news spreads quickly and may need to adopt aggressive public relations tactics once such a rumour has begun. An effective crisis management plan has to be implemented.
Product Tampering: Rivals can buy products of a competitor company in volume, tamper them, and then distribute them into the market. This kind of tactic happens between business rivals who are malevolent.
To counter any impending crisis, proper crisis training, and plan must be used for effective crisis management. It is a standard outline of a process to follow for an organisation to act effectively to a crisis.
Crisis management plan emphasis mainly on building infrastructures that assist the company in counteracting possible risks and how to react to crises should they arise.