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Manage Your Crisis: Prepare Before It Hits
Year 2010 started with a string of earthquakes taken place in Haiti, Chile, southern Taiwan and more recently, Turkey. The threats of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and other unexpected events have highlighted the need to plan for contingency. Has your organisation done what it needs to prepare for the worst?
A crisis in the workplace, be it devastating natural disasters, swine flu pandemic, or unexpected happenings like an employee's sudden death, may result in negative impact on the workforce, including talent loss, lower staff morale and productivity. To effectively respond to crises, organisations are suggested to rethink their approach from three areas ”V travel risk management, employee insurance and employees' psychological needs.
Managing Travel Risks
| Mr. Tony Ridley, Director, Security Services, Asia Pacific, International SOS. |
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Natural and man-made disasters urge organisations to think about the unthinkable part of their businesses. In recent years, the increasing threat of terrorism taught many organisations valuable lessons about the importance of travel risk management.
"The challenges of operating in a globalised market place mean that business travellers have to be willing to travel to far flung corners of the world. They need to have the confidence that their employers consider their safety as paramount and have assistance services in place for all eventualities. There is also growing awareness among employers that they have a duty of care towards employees to protect them when they travel on business, especially to areas of known risk," says Mr. Tony Ridley, Director, Security Services, Asia Pacific, International SOS.
Mr. Ridley suggests organisations map travel risks as a practical first step before establishing a travel risk management plan comprising policies and processes to manage and respond to the risks.
"For organisations, increased legal and reputational exposures are gradually shaping their corporate travel policies. Companies need to have visibility of and responsibility for their employees' duty of care when abroad. The need to invest in a set of tools that can communicate timely information and provide immediate assistance is now more urgent than before."
TravelTracker
Organisations' needs to ensure business travellers' safety lead to the birth of a series of travel tracking tools in the market, among which we can find TravelTracker, a new online system launched by International SOS.
"TravelTracker is an online service that offers automated pre-travel advice, real-time tracking of travel bookings, reports on who in an organisation is travelling where, and the communication tools to contact travellers in the event of an emergency. TravelTracker and other tools make companies more profitable, efficient, boosts staff morale and provides an overall, safer working environment," he explains.
However, Mr. Ridley points out that merely adopting these tools is not enough. He suggests that organisations seek external travel security support to optimise travel risk management procedures.
"Travel security support enables companies' human resources and internal risk management teams access the best-in-class information, advice, tracking and on-the-ground support. Access to a global team of experienced medical and security experts with relevant experience, infrastructure and technology capabilities, often are a great help to organisations in their corporate duty of care to keep their international travellers and expatriates safe - wherever they are assigned."
Employee Insurance
| Mr. Ronald C.S. Lai, Chief Executive Officer, Aon Hong Kong Limited. |
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Crisis preparedness is definitely a critical matter for organisations of all sizes. To implement duty of care towards their people, organisations should never neglect employee insurance, which is also an integral part of crisis management.
"According to the labour legislation and Employment Ordinance in Hong Kong, it is the employers' liability to purchase employees' compensation insurance to protect their people from work-related injury. Whether it is caused by natural disasters, contagious diseases or terrorist attacks, as long as the injury is arising out of and in the course of employment, employees are entitled to compensation," says Mr. Ronald C.S. Lai, Chief Executive Officer, Aon Hong Kong Limited.
In fact, there are many different types of insurance available in the market. Besides employees' compensation insurance, different types of insurance can be arranged for contingency, such as natural disasters, terrorist activities or pandemic.
"For example, in recent years, more people are concerned for the risk of terrorist attack. It is covered in employees' compensation insurance and most of the travel insurance available in the market. However, other insurance types like property insurance may not necessarily compensate for loss caused by terrorism, unless special covers are agreed."
Beware of Coverage
Although terrorist attack is covered in employees' compensation insurance, Mr. Lai reminds employers to make sure that the policy states clearly that employees are also protected when abroad.
"Most employees' compensation insurance policies normally only cover accidents occurred locally, so when your employees travel abroad, make sure that the policy is also extended to cover accidents occur overseas."
Mr. Lai reveals that more and more organisations in Hong Kong are asking about insurance against terrorism. In response to the demand, Aon offers not only terrorism insurance solution but also crisis management consulting to assist organisations in mitigating possible risks.
"Insurance is only a part of a holistic risk management strategy. We face risks every day, but how should we handle and mitigate these risks? Insurance is one of the approaches in transferring risks. Since coverage of insurance policies differs, it's important to understand the terms and conditions in each policy carefully."
Seeking Professional Advice
In selection of insurance plans, as pointed out by Mr. Lai, many organisations make decisions by merely looking at the premium without carefully consider whether the coverage suits their needs, whilst some often ignore the security, reputation and service details of the provider.
"It's important to understand the terms and conditions well to see if the plan fits your need. It's also important to take the insurer's reputation, service quality, ranking and security into consideration. If you are not familiar with insurance, seek advice from professional insurance brokers before you make decisions," he suggests.
Contingency Planning
Despite the significance of insurance, there's no way to plan for every eventuality when a crisis strikes. Mr. Lai adds, "Insurance is not a panacea. We can't foresee every possible contingency that may occur, but we can lower the possibility of having risks, prevent a crisis from happening and minimise its impact on our workforce. By careful forethought and business contingency planning, we can be better prepared for crises."
"The development of contingency plans is critical for organisations of all sizes to support their identified challenges. The presence and practice of plans in advance is often the separation between surviving and failing in the event of minor or major incidents. Plans are the start, whilst the education and simulation or training teams that support such plans are vital to the overall success," Mr. Ridley agrees and says.
Care for Your People
| Mr. Eric Kung, Chairman & CEO, Human Dynamic. |
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When it comes to crisis preparedness, Mr. Eric Kung, Chairman & CEO, Human Dynamic believes that organisations in general are aware of it, but may not be sensitive enough to the impact a crisis may have on employees.
"Take the swine flu pandemic. Initially many organisations gave active response to it. There were even companies setting up centres for preparation. I think many organisations are doing pretty much in business contingency planning, but the effect could be enhanced if they are more reactive to people matters."
"When there's a crisis, it's natural that leaders put their focus on business and assume that it will continue as long as they have the ”„hardware' or plans in place. Therefore, sometimes they may not be sufficiently prepared to handle people's emotional problems."
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
As Mr. Kung points out, research shows that after exposure to a crisis situation, people often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is "a normal reaction in an abnormal situation".
Symptoms of PTSD usually appear several weeks after the event or trauma, including flashbacks or nightmares of the trauma; avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma; insomnia, etc. In this case, counselling and psychological consulting is essential.
"During a crisis, the first idea leaders have is to settle it as quickly as possible. Yes, it's right, but you should also consider the emotional upheaval your people may have experienced. Leaders should take into account the impact of the crisis on their people. They should bear in mind that, without people, even the best BCP cannot be realised."
Employee Assistance Programmes
To help your people manage their psychological traumas and stress, employee assistance programmes (EAPs) can be an effective means of safeguarding employees' mental health and dealing with the negative emotions that they may experience after a crisis.
"Organisations are usually involved in the incidents and it's hard for them to stand aside and give a hand. Thus, in some situations, organisations are suggested to turn to external consultants and psychologists for professional assistance."
"Employee assistance consultants provide on-site support and Critical Incident Stress Debriefings (CISD) to help employees manage the grief process. On-site support means counseling and consulting to the employees concerned, whilst CISD is a group debriefing session for small groups of participants," he adds.
The Three Essentials
Suggested by Mr. Kung, there are three essentials of crisis management that organisations should take heed:
1. Staff communication planning: Business contingency planning is important, but organisations should also be aware of having staff communication planning.
2. Diffusing: How to provide immediate diffusing to stabilise a volatile situation and ensure employee safety?
3. Post-traumatic stress debriefings and CISD: Educational and preventive measures to help employees manage the grief process and their stress through relaxation exercise and psychological support.
Leadership Is Key
Mr. Kung believes that many organisations have detailed and exhaustive plans but the problem is that they may not be able to effectively execute these plans in response to crises.
"A director of an organisation affected by the Sichuan earthquake told me that their organisation had the most robust protocol and BCP, they even held rehearsal for contingency. But when the earthquake occurred, all the plans were of no use. We can see BCP is not all, whether the organisation can manage the crisis well depends on good communication, leadership and teamwork," he concludes.
For businesses of all sizes, a preparedness plan is critical in minimising the human and economic loss and the risk of interruption to business that can be affected by both man-made and natural disasters.
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