CHAPTER 8
CRISIS MANAGEMENT PLAN
Minimizing the Damage
Lost time is never found again.
—Benjamin Franklin
INTRODUCTION
The first moments of an incident that disrupts the business are ones of executive anxiety. There is little reliable information and a great need to take immediate action. But what should be done? What is an overreaction, and what is too little too late? In an after-hours emergency, the first plan to execute is the Crisis Management Plan. It describes those first important steps to take until more specific information becomes available.
This plan describes the initial steps for dealing with an adverse situation. Guidelines are provided for initial notification and executive actions required during the incident as the functional experts begin the recovery processes. There is much to do in a short time! Customers must be reassured that their products will still be delivered on time—or assisted with finding alternate sources. Employees will want to know how they can help. The insurance adjuster may require that nothing moves until the company reviews the damage. The news media are arriving and deciding how they can tell your story for the greater entertainment of their audiences. The list of executive actions is long and the list contains little information about containing and remediating damage. That is left for other teams. The executive team must focus on external communications, overall coordination of the recovery, and taking care of the entire employee population.
The Problem
At the time of incident, minimal information is available. Is the damage big or small? Is it widespread or confined to one area? All of this is used to determine if “we can keep the doors open.” Prompt action is required to quickly steer the company back to normality, but what to do? This plan begins at the point of incident and continues until either a disaster is declared or the situation is determined to be a local issue.
In a disaster, executives must continue their normal company responsibilities to communicate and control the situation. To do this, they need communication tools (telephone, e-mail, Web site, instant messaging, etc.) to pass on instructions or information bulletins. They must be aware of the response teams’ progress without interfering with their work. Finally, they must provide the resources necessary to speed the recovery.
The Solution
A prompt response is the result of careful preparation. The first place to save time is in notifying the teams. Traditional call trees are unreliable and time consuming. Establish a contract with a company that provides an automated dialing system (autodialer). This service notifies many people at the same time.
Most problems are small. Rolling out the Crisis Management Team every time a squirrel chews through an electrical wire will soon diminish enthusiasm for incident response. A phased response requires one person to receive the call and to come in to investigate. Any additional support personnel can be contacted directly. However, if a major incident occurs, then the entire team should be activated.
Finally, the Crisis Management Team provides command and control during the damage containment and disaster recovery processes. The executive staff provides many important services to manage the public message, to address the needs of shareholders, and to satisfy the information needs of employees.
The phases in the executive recovery plan are:
Receive notification and investigate its apparent seriousness.
Alert the executive team and decide to work through the problem or declare a company “disaster.”
Activate the Command Center and summon the executive staff.
Address external communications until the recovery teams restore minimal service.
Continue supporting the recovery.
Keep customers informed of their order status.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT PLAN ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
There are several roles that must be fulfilled when the disaster first occurs to optimize the organization’s response. These roles include:
First Point of Contact. Usually the person who runs the facility’s day-to-day maintenance. This person can look at a situation (like a gaping hole in the roof) and decide how to contain it (whom to call and what materials and tools to request, etc.) until it can be repaired.
Facility Manager. Coordinates damage assessment, salvage, and restoration activities.
Executive Team.
CEO. Or, whoever makes the top business decisions.
CIO. Makes the IT strategic decisions and advises top executives on the IT recovery progress.
Disaster Recovery Manager. Advises executives on the disaster recovery plan execution and processes.
Executive Staff.
Corporate Communications Manager. Coordinates with the news media to ensure accurate reporting.
Human Resources Manager. Coordinates communications and notification to all employees.
Legal Team. Coordinates with the insurance company to meet assessment needs while speeding the company’s recovery.
Purchasing Manager. Quickly contacts suppliers and orders needed support.
Sales Manager. Contacts customers to assure them of the timely delivery of their orders or to assist them in finding an alternative source of goods and services.
ESSENTIAL PLAN ELEMENTS
Every plan is unique to an organization and how it conducts its business. Privately held companies may see the owners onsite personally directing every action, while publicly traded organizations will need to keep their Board of Directors apprised of the situation.
Included on the CD included with this book is a sample Crisis Management Plan (Form 8-1). This sample plan is only a starting point. Customize it to meet your own company requirements. For instance, there are example risk assessments and restoration priority charts which you must replace with those based on your own information developed in other chapters.
Identify Assembly Points
To minimize confusion, ask everyone to automatically meet in a preselected place. Once notified of an incident, team members will not have to wait for further instructions; they will know where to go. The advantage of a prearranged rendezvous point is that no matter where someone is, in or out of the facility, he or she will know where to meet the rest of the team. The trick is that there are several situations to address:
During Working Hours
Isolated Incident. Assemble at some point in the facility that is prewired directly to external data and telephone service. It is usually a specific conference room. As the situation develops, this command center may move to a point closer to the recovery action.
Building Evacuation. This is some point away from the building. For example, this might be in the southwest corner of the parking lot next to the light pole. The goal is to select a place that should not be blocked by emergency equipment in the event of a building fire.
After Working Hours
If the building is intact, then assemble at the same outside assembly point as if the building was evacuated. Only enter the building after it is structurally cleared.
If the building is not available, due to a structural fire or other structural issue, select a nearby location (off of the company property) to assemble. For example, this might be a 24-hour grocery store. The location should be well lit at all hours, have a large parking lot so the team can assemble away from the front door, and be readily located by everyone.
As people arrive at the assembly point, begin organizing teams. The facilities team investigates the condition of the structure. The security team obtains clearance from the emergency services (fire, rescue, police) to enter the building to assess damage. The executive team may choose to relocate to a nearby hotel conference room to establish a temporary command center that is not affected by the weather. If the assembly point is then changed, issue another team announcement via the autodialer telling everyone where the new command center will be.
Assembly points should be identified for the general employees immediately involved in the recovery:
During Working Hours. The assembly points should be identified in the company’s building evacuation plan. (Predefined assembly points facilitate the determination of whether anyone remains in the building.)
After Working Hours. Employees should be encouraged to stay home and near the telephone in case they are needed in the recovery. If they are already inbound, then identify a nearby property large enough to accommodate employee parking, which includes sanitation facilities and basic shelter from the weather.
Communications Plan
Communicating is the sharing of ideas, directions, and status information. Communications is the executive’s way of moving people to action during an incident. It is essential for coordinating the efforts of many people in a short amount of time. To communicate with someone, you must have a communications medium and a message. What sounds so simple can become complex.
Communications planning is something that you can miss keenly when it is needed. Prior to an incident, determine who will be contacted in what situation. The most common method is by telephone. This means that an up-to-date telephone contact list must be created and maintained for use in emergencies.
The communications plan must consider the three phases of communication:
Initial Notification. Using automatic notification.
During the Damage Assessment. Using cellular telephones (in a wide-area disaster, the cellular system may be overwhelmed or damaged).
During the Recovery. Person-to-person communications between the command center and the recovery site.
Maintaining a current telephone list is more difficult than it sounds. People come into and leave companies or departments all the time. They change residences and cellular telephone companies. (Although in most cases your telephone number can move with you, other circumstances may prevent it.) Employees may switch to an unlisted telephone number and, for personal reasons, never answer their personal phones directly. Every change means that an updated list must be distributed, and potentially requires a change to the autodialer database.
Some people are reluctant to provide their home telephone numbers for privacy reasons. Discontented employees and former employees may use it to harass company leaders. Others may use it to call during off hours to chat about minor business issues better left to working hours. Therefore, an emergency recall list is always considered company confidential information. Its distribution is limited to those people on the list.
Some companies maintain their telephone recall lists in their business continuity plan’s administrative plan. This is because notification lists touch on all recovery plans.
Next is the choice of a tool to contact the recovery teams. It might be by telephone or face to face. In the early moments of an incident, face-to-face communication may be difficult, particularly if the team is scattered about the facility. After hours, this may be even more complex, as some people are at home, traveling, visiting someone else, or on vacation. Trying to phone each person is too time consuming. An essential tool is an automatic dialing system (also known as a robocaller or autodialer).
Automatic dialers save valuable time over “call trees.” Traditionally, managers would call each individual on their list, dialing one person after another, trying each number on the list until that person was notified (and delaying notification of everyone else on the list). Each person would call four people, who would then call four others, and so on. This is less reliable than an autodialer because call tree participants may be difficult to contact or may neglect to call some of the people on the tree. They may not possess a current telephone list and lose time calling around to get the right number. When someone is contacted, a conversation may ensue about the problem, what to do, etc., which delays notification of others.
Time lost dialing staff members is time that could be used assisting with the recovery. With an autodialer, the manager calls one number and enters an access code. A message is recorded and instantly sent to everyone on that list.
One of the reasons to use an outside service for the autodialer service is accessibility. If the company’s headquarters is up in flames or otherwise unusable, the autodialer would be out of commission if it was inside the building. Contracting for this service ensures that it is far away from the disaster site and unlikely to have been involved in it.
An autodialer provides the following essential services:
One call notifies each person on the contact list simultaneously, eliminating delays.
Enables the caller to record a message specific to the situation. This ensures that every recipient hears the same words the same way. When calling individuals manually, the message is sometimes altered in subtle or significant ways.
Has a sequence of telephone numbers to call for each person (home, company cell number, personal cell number) until everyone is contacted.
Will repeatedly try at a predetermined interval (such as once every two hours) for a set number of attempts.
When a caller is reached, he or she presses the appropriate key on the phone to acknowledge message receipt.
The autodialer can report who has not been reached. This alerts the team to notify that person’s backup support.
Multiple Call Lists
Executive communications plans use multiple autodialer notification lists. These lists correspond to the various stages on the executive incident management plan:
Executives. Used to notify senior executives, such as the CEO, the CIO, Controller, Data Operations Manager, etc.
Functional Staff. Used to bring in the various department leaders, such as Facilities Management, Human Resources, Corporate Communications, etc.
Second and Third Line Managers and Supervisors. Used to notify all company leaders of the situation and information to pass on to their employees.
All Call. The general notification sent out to all team members.
Human Resources departments should periodically exercise the autodialer system for broadcasting information to employees. This validates the telephone numbers in the dialer and teaches the workers to wait for a message in a wide-area disaster. For example, in the event of a severe snow and ice storm, the company may cancel work and use the autodialer to notify everyone before they leave home, or even to state that the facility is still open.
In a disaster, the Human Resources Director can use this to ask that employees stay away from the work site until called back in. They may also use it to call everyone to a meeting to explain the situation and progress of the recovery.
Security
The company security team is the primary contact with local emergency services personnel. When police, fire, and emergency services personnel are on the scene in their official capacities, they have the authority to compel people to stay out of a building or area while they perform their duties. No employees may enter a structure until the police/fire release it. If it is a crime scene (such as an arson investigation), try to have as much of the facility released as practical.
During the course of emergency response, doors and gates may have been forced open. These entry points must be guarded until the company’s security perimeter can be restored. If this requires more personnel than is available to the company, a private security company must be brought onsite. This security situation will be further aggravated if company property and papers have been scattered across adjacent properties by high winds or flood waters.
Since the outside security service cannot tell who should or should not be onsite, ask all employees to identify themselves with their company ID card. This will minimize the potential for looters to walk in amongst the chaos and steal company assets.
EXECUTIVE STAFF RESPONSIBILITIES
Executives all have the responsibility to respond once a disaster has occurred. Each has a role to play in responding to the disaster and making sure that the organization is functioning as soon as possible.
Facilities
The Facilities Director is the first person to inspect the structure, as that person has the most technical understanding of the structure (everything from where in the ceiling the network wire is routed to the point where the electricity enters the building to the location of buried utility connections). There is much to evaluate about a building before judging it fit to use, partially fit, or a danger to anyone who enters.
The initial facilities inspection begins by gathering opinions from the emergency services teams as to whether it is safe to enter the structure. Bulging walls and sagging roofs may not be easily seen in the dark, and an opinion might have to wait for daylight.
If the structure is usable, the next step is to verify that essential utility services are operational. The absence of one or more utility services can be mitigated and may not prohibit use of the building. Essential services include:
Electrical
Water
Telephone
Data
Sewer
Gas and other utilities
If the property is leased, then the landlord must document the plan to respond to an emergency within one hour. Know who in your company will be notified and at what point in the emergency. Be sure this plan is tested. Tenants must know the official assembly areas for a working hours and an after-hours emergency.
Once the structure can be entered, the first priority is to stop the spread of damage.
Assess the situation.
Plan the first recovery actions.
Stop the spread of damage.
Begin salvage.
Indentify what is no longer usable.
Remove salvageable assets.
Every utility service has a point in the building where it can be shut off. The trick is to know where it is. These places are usually locked. Obtain the keys from a custodian or Facilities Director or, if neither is available, use a bolt cutter. Knowing where the cutoffs are may minimize the spread of damage. For example, if a wall collapses in a storm and it severs a sprinkler pipe, then water will spew everywhere and soak down through all of the floors until the water is shut off to the sprinkler system or to the building.
Some of the tools you may find handy in a disaster include:
Tarps to cover holes in roof and walls.
Absorbent material to block water.
List of equipment suppliers.
Plenty of flashlights and batteries.
A wet vacuum.
Executives
There is a fine line between “we can work around this during normal operations” and “we must pause company operations to work through this.” Declaring a disaster means that the company is focusing most of its time, materials, and energy on recovering from a disaster. This is why only an executive can make this decision. Issuing this declaration to the recovery team means:
Closing the business for a period of time to make the most of what is left.
Moving some or all operations to recovery site(s).
Initiating long-term recovery planning.
Opening the Command Center.
Legal
We live in a lawsuit-happy society. The company’s legal adviser must be alerted to any significant incident. There are many areas where a company may need to minimize its liability. Some companies contract to deliver goods or services on a schedule and now there may be a significant interruption. What is the legal impact? If someone is injured or killed during the incident, what legal issues must be carefully monitored? If there is a crime scene, could the company be liable in some manner?
Another area where the legal adviser is useful is during negotiations with the insurance company. Some insurance companies may want the incident site to be left untouched until it can be witnessed and assessed by its own adjuster. This will slow the use of undamaged machinery in the recovery. A delay by the insurance adjuster may be even greater in the event of a wide-area disaster.
Corporate Communications
Every company needs a designated spokesperson, who should establish a working relationship with the local news media well before any incident occurs. Small companies may hire a media relations service to provide the same support. The spokesperson is the company’s “face to the world” and good relations before an incident will make the media more open to working with the company.
Always prepare basic announcements to be used on short notice. The news media have their own timelines to meet and will press for answers that the company may not be prepared to give. An example announcement might be, “Thank you for coming to this press briefing. I am the official spokesperson for my company. This morning, an alarm was monitored in the office area and the fire department was summoned. No company employees were in the building at the time. We have no further comment until the authorities complete their investigation.”
The official company spokesperson must always be the only one to make official announcements. The news media should know the person. Otherwise, the company may lose control of its message as different executives “helpfully” provide their own opinions, not realizing that they may be interpreted as official announcements. A firm rule is that no one talks to the news media except the official spokesperson.
How seriously can things get out of hand? In January 2006, an explosion in a coal mine near Sago, West Virginia, trapped 13 miners. The news coverage was intense. After two days, rescuers reported to the Command Center that they had found the trapped miners. Someone in the Command Center interpreted this as meaning they were alive and passed an unauthorized message to the families. After several hours, it was confirmed that only one of the 13 miners survived. This unauthorized contact by someone in the Command Center made a very difficult situation much worse for the families (and the mine owners).
Inform the media when official announcements will be made. A reliable flow of status information reassures the public at a difficult time. Sometimes publishing a schedule for news updates is useful, so everyone can be ready at the same time to hear the same information. As a result, they may be less inclined to poke around.
During an incident, some of the news media may bypass the official communications channel and try to talk to company personnel working on the recovery. Every company has talkative employees, who readily express an opinion. If this cannot be stopped, at least make sure one of the company executives tags along to explain technical terms and to ensure that statements widely at variance with the official announcements are rebutted. No one wants an off-the-cuff remark repeated in a news report that might be presented later as a fact during a lawsuit.
Both Human Resources and Corporate Communications must have plans in place for how they will handle the injury or death of an employee on the job. This delicate situation must address how to notify the family prior to releasing names to the news media. It must also include ongoing family support after the notification.
HUMAN RESOURCES
Sometimes in the rush to recover a critical company function, we forget that a company is a collection of people. These people all have a stake in the company’s survival (and their continuing paychecks). The Human Resources function addresses employee concerns during the crisis.
Dealing with Injuries or Fatalities
Once onsite, the Human Resources Director works with the Security Manager to determine if anyone (employee, rescue personnel, bypasser or criminal) was injured. If they have been, HR then must notify the company’s legal adviser and promptly collect the following details:
Type of event.
Location of occurrence.
Time of occurrence.
Possible causes of the injury or death.
If there are injuries and/or fatalities the following details are required for the Legal department:
How many persons were injured or killed.
Names of all affected persons, if available.
Disposition of persons seriously injured.
Accounting for all staff who had been in the facility at the time of event occurrence.
Immediately contact the local authorities that may have jurisdiction over the incident and gather information about the incident and the injured. Find out where they were taken and if the families have been notified.
Using employment records and information provided by the worker’s supervisor, reach out to assist the family and answer questions about company benefits. This will include medical or life insurance.
During this difficult time, families may ask many question about the incident, the people involved, etc. Working together with the company’s legal advisers, craft answers to the sort of questions that may be asked before meeting with the family.
Reassigning Staff
In a disaster, many people are needed to help. However, most jobs require someone with a specific skill. In a wide-area disaster, some employees may be occupied with damages to their home or injuries to family members. These vital people will not be available when needed most. Therefore, the Human Resources department’s Incident Response plan must include an analysis of employees with specific skills who can be called on in an emergency. Employees often move around in a company. For example, someone who spent five years in the payroll department may have spent the last year in sales. In an emergency, this person can bring his or her rusty payroll skills over to help where needed. This will only happen if Human Resources keeps track of individual skills.
The CD has three skills matrices (for IT personnel) that identify employee skills from different perspectives. Updating these matrices at least every quarter will provide valuable staffing information for assigning people during the recovery. These tables are also valuable during a minor crisis, when executives struggle to find “someone” to address an issue.
Form 8-2, Skill Matrix by Technical Skill. Lists the programming languages and level of expertise.
Form 8-3, Skill Matrix by Job Process. Lists business processes each person is skilled in using.
Form 8-4, Skill Matrix by Job Function. Lists functional skills that may be useful in multiple processes.
Acquire Additional Personnel
During emergencies, various types of skilled labor must be found to begin work immediately. The best place to find skilled labor is other company sites. These personnel are already employees and no background check should be necessary. In some cases, they may be familiar with the areas in which you need help. As employees, they can be required to catch the next airplane. Otherwise, skilled help must be acquired from local contracting companies. However, bringing in a group of strangers who require training may take more time than would be saved.
Alternatively, employees could be reassigned to help with the recovery by doing jobs outside of their normal responsibilities. Most of a skilled worker’s time is spent doing things that require much less expertise. Employees from other departments may therefore assist with these tasks.
Attendance in Difficult Times
During a crisis, payroll will be a primary employee concern. In the first few days after the incident, most companies will continue to pay employees until they determine how long they will be out of service. Good employees take a long time to find and train. If the company is no longer paying them, they will be forced to seek work elsewhere. Prior to an incident, establish a payroll policy to avoid worrying about this issue for the first few days. All supervisors will be permitted to recite the policy to their teams. For example:
If employees are needed to assist with the recovery, they must come onsite and remain there for at least an 8-hour shift for each day requested by the company.
If an employee refuses to attend or remain for the requested time, the company may end that person’s employment.
In the event that the employee’s personal residence has been damaged or members of his or her immediate family have been seriously injured, then that employee will not be required to come to the recovery site.
Post-Traumatic Counseling
People deal with stress in their own ways. Employees may have witnessed a traumatic event or it may have impacted a dear friend. Just the potential of a job loss is stressful to most employees. This stress may result in lower productivity, attendance problems, and other difficulties.
To deal with this stress, engage a mental health counseling service well in advance. During normal operations, the same organization may also provide confidential employee counseling after hours for personal issues. Within 48 hours after an incident, the mental health counselor should meet with employees in small groups to discuss their concerns. The counselor should also return in approximately a month for a follow-up general counseling session. The need for additional sessions will depend on the nature of the incident and what was witnessed by the staff.
Contracting for mental health counseling in advance helps to ensure it will be available in a wide-area disaster, if needed. Trying to arrange for this service on the spur of the moment may provide uneven results.
SALES
The Sales department works endlessly to build up a set of loyal and profitable customers. It must work with these customers so that the company’s disaster does not become the customer’s disaster. To do this, the sales team notifies all critical customers of the situation and provides company approved updates as the recovery continues. If necessary, the sales team purchases products or services for the customer and sells them at the normal price. This will usually be at a loss but will keep the customer serviced until the recovery can be completed.
PURCHASING
The Purchasing function of the Accounting department must provide prompt issuance of purchase orders to keep the recovery moving forward. If the IT systems are inoperable, then the purchase orders must be cut manually. Purchasing may also be involved with bringing in contract workers, hiring additional security forces, etc.
SECTION I—NOTIFICATION AND INITIAL TRIAGE
When an incident occurs during normal working hours, the staff is already onsite and can skip ahead to Section II of the plan. However, problems arise in their own good time, so this plan begins in the dark of night in the middle of a holiday weekend when the company staff is away from the workplace.
It begins with notification that “something” has occurred. This might come from the night watchman or from an alarm service. The incident might be the ringing of a burglar or fire alarm, or almost anything else. At this point, the entire first response team can be rolled out (and be too tired to work the next day) or one person can drive in to see if the damage is widespread or contained to one small place.
If the incident appears to significantly impact the next day’s operations, then the executive team must be notified. Record an incident status message on the autodialer system and summon the executive team. In some cases, this may be an alert that does not require immediate action, but they will know the problem must be addressed first thing in the morning.
After the incident and the initial notification, contain the damage so that it does not spread. Containment is normally done by the Facilities Director (which is why most companies use this person as their first responder). The Facilities Director will have a separate notification list on the autodialer.
Examples of containing the damage include:
After a fire, installing a barrier to prevent water from spreading or to catch leaks if it seeps through the floor to offices below.
Stretching tarps over holes in the roof created by high winds.
Patching a hole in the perimeter fence if a car accident has punched through it.
Securing a door forced open by a burglar.
If the damage is severe, it may require that the executive team come onsite. All jokes about lacking technical expertise aside, this group needs an early understanding of the situation. As previously described, they were notified via autodialer. Some of the reasons this team must come onsite include:
There will be a significant interruption of some portion of the company operations. Arrangements must be made to continue the flow of goods and services to customers.
The incident will require a prompt action to remedy, such as the loss of vital equipment, loss of the telephone switch, or relocation to the data center.
Damage will halt most productive work for the next day so when the workers arrive, they must be told to go home or to the recovery site.
SECTION II—SUPPORTING THE RECOVERY TEAMS
When the executive team members arrive, they are briefed by the Facilities Director on the damage. Based on this discussion and their inspection of the situation, they decide to both patch things together and repair them the next day or to bring out the recovery teams. The key issue is the size of the operational impact (e.g., if damage is confined to one small work cell or encompasses an entire department).
If an incident requires immediate response, the first action is to open the Command Center. (If possible, use the onsite Command Center.) This is the “Go To” place for everyone involved in the recovery. Many people will want to help and their actions may undo or interfere with the careful work of others.
Next, use the autodialer system to call in the recovery teams. The recovery teams also include support staff to include:
Purchasing. So emergency orders can be submitted for everything needed.
(Be prepared to cut purchase orders manually!)
Corporate Communications. It is better for a company to send out its own story and control the message than to let the local news channel inform your customers and suppliers of the incident. This message may be replayed later in a lawsuit, so the wording must be minimal and accurate.
Human Resources. Handling the employees as they show up for work. Some will be needed for the recovery, and others must be sent home.
Payroll. Payroll must know your policy. Do you pay the people sent home or is it a no-work day? In addition, if you only pay those onsite, how do you track who is here and for how long?
Disaster Declaration
Based on the situation, the Crisis Management Team decides to either work around the problem during normal operations or to declare a disaster. Declaring a partial or full disaster means that normal operations are halted. All attention is turned to restoring service at the recovery sites. Such a revenue ending decision may only be made at the highest levels.
The decision to declare a disaster is based on the length of time required to restore service. If it is longer than the company’s published recovery time objective (RTO), then essential services can be restored quicker at the recovery site than the disaster site.
Supporting the Recovery
During the recovery, the Crisis Management Team and the company’s executive staff continue to provide support services to the teams. It is important that communications are consistent and posted at published times. This reduces interruptions to the Command Center by ensuring that one person after another does not keep asking the same questions.
The tracking log ensures that Command Center personnel know who is onsite and where they are. If a family emergency arises (as might occur during a wide-area recovery), then that person can be quickly notified. Similarly, if someone is at the disaster site instead of the recovery site, then this updated document helps to locate them.
Another important service is to identify skills needed at a particular site and then calling this person to come in. This is most important for notifying the backup support person (or the closest that you can find one) to come in.
CONCLUSION
Disasters are a “come as you are” affair. Autodialers, assembly points, and policies must all be in place before they are needed. Executives have an important role to play in incident containment and recovery. A plan for company executives focuses their energies in areas where they excel and away from micromanaging the recovery teams.
The Crisis Management Plan develops the situation from the first notification through the disaster declaration. Time lost fumbling through the early hours might permit the spread of additional damage. Prompt action speeds a company to a quicker recovery. For example, if high winds blew the roof off, then a second storm an hour later poured a deluge onto the building. Losing the time in between compounds the problem.
Throughout the plan the emphasis is on communications. Executives do not turn their own screwdrivers. They coordinate the efforts of others to do so. In an emergency, coordinating the recovery teams is essential to avoid losing time. Every day the facility is inoperable is another day of all cost to the company without income.
The executive support team members, all of whom have vital functions to perform, must prepare in advance to provide on-demand services. Also, the IT systems may not be available so many processes may be manual or depend on files stored off-site.
During a disaster, much of the executives’ efforts address external issues. Managing the news media, communicating with major customers and stakeholders, and addressing legal issues are vital parts of the long-term recovery. In the near term, the Security Team protects company assets while the Human Resources department protects the company’s human capital.