• Home
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Community Involvement
    • Mission and Values
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Services
    • Public Relations
    • Content
    • Chambers Law Firm Rankings
    • Crisis & Litigation PR
    • Supreme Court Litigation
    • Media Training
    • Digital
    • Video
    • Poston Programs and Webinars
    • Podcasts
    • Public Affairs
    • CEO and Executive Leadership Communications
    • Internal and Employee Communications
  • Industries
    • Legal
    • Financial Services
    • Real Estate
    • Health Care
    • Architecture, Engineering and Construction
    • Associations & Professional Societies
    • Other Professional Services
  • Results
  • Blog
  • Careers
    • Openings
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Contact
  • Search
  • Home
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Community Involvement
    • Mission and Values
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Services
    • Public Relations
    • Content
    • Chambers Law Firm Rankings
    • Crisis & Litigation PR
    • Supreme Court Litigation
    • Media Training
    • Digital
    • Video
    • Poston Programs and Webinars
    • Podcasts
    • Public Affairs
    • CEO and Executive Leadership Communications
    • Internal and Employee Communications
  • Industries
    • Legal
    • Financial Services
    • Real Estate
    • Health Care
    • Architecture, Engineering and Construction
    • Associations & Professional Societies
    • Other Professional Services
  • Results
  • Blog
  • Careers
    • Openings
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Contact
  • Search

Don’t Panic: It’s Never Too Late to Make a Plan to Protect Your Business

  • Posted by Megan Paquin
  • On March 18, 2020
  • communications, coronavirus, crisis, crisis strategy, risk assessment

Share This...

There’s no doubt about it: Crisis begets crisis. Often, we hear from business leaders who have been dealing with a crisis for days, weeks or months but then find themselves dealing with new problems as a result. Cybercriminals, for example, are known to capitalize on organizational crises and catastrophic events to infiltrate IT systems. Then, there are crises unrelated to COVID-19 that can further impair your organization.

Megan Paquin

Megan Paquin

So what’s a business leader to do? Plan.

It is never too late to develop a business continuity plan. And, while that might seem easier said than done in this unprecedented situation, there are a few simple strategies to maintain a proactive mindset even when it seems there’s only time to react.

  1. Constantly reframe and evaluate the situation around the primary crisis. Before you rush to make a decision based on the latest news or guidelines, take a moment to fully assess the big picture. Start with creating a risk assessment worksheet. Each day, review and make updates based on the information that is currently available. Time stamp and maintain a record of these updates to learn from and adapt as the primary crisis continues to evolve.
  2. Develop a monitoring protocol to learn from others. In crisis, organizations tend to insulate themselves and focus on containment. Instead, assign a member of the crisis team to look outward. This individual should constantly review media and other sources for information about industry response and impact. How are your partners and competitors communicating with external audiences? Have their operations been affected? Incorporate information that could have an impact on your own assets or operations within the daily risk assessment.
  3. Create action plans based on updates to the risk assessment. What trends are you seeing as you update the risk assessment that are making a potential related or unrelated crisis more likely? Assign members of the crisis team to develop a specific action plan to address those issues. Then, conduct a brief, tabletop execution of the action plan to test it. If your organization’s crisis management plan already includes action plans for various crises, skip to the tabletop exercise and revise based on your team’s effectiveness in executing under the current circumstances.
  4. Listen to your employees and incorporate their concerns into your plan. We can’t state this enough, so here it comes again. Employee relations is the most overlooked but most essential aspect of your business continuity plan. Are your employees expressing frustration about the remote work situation? Have you received questions about the potential for layoffs? Your leadership team might feel confident and understand all of the organization’s contingency plans, but that doesn’t mean your employees do. In the absence of information, we often see speculation and employees – from the front-line to middle- and senior-management – make rash and inappropriate decisions. We can see the fallout of such actions in the cruise line industry where sales managers’ decisions to downplay coronavirus concerns to clients has resulted in a class-action lawsuit from investors who suffered the fallout in the stock market. Research indicates employees have a high-level of trust in private companies to lead in this crisis – so, ensure that you listen to their concerns, evaluate them in your risk assessment and create an action plan to address them as time goes on.
  5. Don’t isolate your business. Just because we are social distancing, that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. There are many resources available to help businesses develop a business continuity plan, respond to crisis and take corrective actions when needed. Our Crisis Communications Team is available 24/7 and rapidly responding to various issues related and not related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Ready.gov also offers an abundance of resources for businesses, including emergency management best practices to address any potential risk your business could face.

[ Download Poston’s Risk Assessment Worksheet ]

Assuming a proactive posture will ensure your business weathers this challenge. Take time to save time. Pause, reflect and look outward to learn from the situation and adapt your plans for the future. With these simple steps, your business will be poised to withstand this challenge and may even find opportunities to emerge stronger.

The information in this article is accurate as of press time. However, as the situation around COVID-19 continues to evolve, it is possible that some data have changed since publication and some recommendations may not be applicable or appropriate to implement for your organization at this time. While we endeavor to keep our insights as up-to-date as possible, we also encourage readers to stay informed on news and recommendations from their own communities by using the CDC and WHO as resources.

Our Crisis Communications Team is also available 24/7 and rapidly responding to various issues related to the COVID-19 outbreak. If your organization requires immediate assistance, please contact Dave Poston at (678) 358-5876 or Megan Paquin at (407) 432-7066.

0 Comments

Recent Posts
  • Poston Communications Recognized as 2023 Daily Report Best Of
  • APR Month: A Celebration of Public Relations Excellence
  • Chambers USA 2024 Research Schedule Released: What Law Firms Need to Know
  • Poston Adds Award Winning PR Professional to Growing Team
  • House of Content Horrors: Content Writing That Will “Scare” Off Your SEO
Archives
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • December 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • April 2016

What’s Next With COVID-19: How to Work and Manage a Team Remotely

Previous thumb

Navigating Social Distancing: How to Meet via Video Successfully

Next thumb
Scroll

What We Do

  • Services
  • Industries
  • Results
  • Blog

Who We Are

  • Our Team
  • Community Involvement
  • Mission and Values

Poston Communications is a public relations agency focused on professional services companies including law, accounting, architecture, associations, construction, engineering, financial services, health care, human resources, interior design, investment banking, management consulting, real estate, recruiting, technology and venture capital.

404-875-3400 | [email protected]

  • Sitemap
  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

©2022 Poston Communications LLC - All rights reserved