One of the perennial rubs of crisis readiness is that companies fail to exercise crisis scenarios.
Just about everyone has a crisis playbook, but few companies look at them regularly, much less conduct meaningful crisis exercises often enough to build and maintain staff muscle memory.
While we lack data on it, we’ll guess that with so many employees working from home since the start of the pandemic, the already-sparse scheduling of desktop crisis drills has contracted even more.
One of the characteristics of crisis is an uncanny ability to arrive according to its schedule, not yours. As a result, a PR crisis strikes when the CEO is in a remote part of China negotiating a deal or the COO is on a ski vacation in Aspen and has gone off the grid.
As such, the most realistic crisis-readiness exercises, pre-pandemic and now, were and are conducted with staff situated in various locations.
As Eliot Hoff, APCO Worldwide’s executive director and global crisis lead, says, “It was rare for a team to be in the same room” for a crisis drill even pre-pandemic. “With travel and disparate offices, decisionmakers were usually spread across the globe.”
Obviously, the pandemic has made gathering the crisis team in a conference room for a table-top drill a bit of nostalgia from pre-pandemic times.
Pre-Pandemic Crisis Tool
Fortunately, a tool APCO developed before the pandemic works during this unusual moment as well. It’s an interactive crisis-simulation software solution called emPOWER.
APCO offers it as a standalone crisis pressure-test tool as well as deploying it with the firm’s clients as part of wider crisis-preparation efforts.
One set-up that worked before the pandemic, Hoff says, was having a selection of crisis team members participate in an emPOWER simulation together, in a conference room, with staff from other company offices or home offices joining remotely.
The jump to have everyone joining remotely during the pandemic was short.
Developed with simulation software company Be Strategic Solutions (BeST), emPOWER typically runs three-four-hour simulations, though APCO has built some that stretch over an entire week, Hoff tells us.
And the type of crisis simulation emPOWER can create is wide-ranging.
Examples include:
- data breaches or other cyber events,
- workplace violence,
- whistleblower journalist inquiries (often tied to litigation)
- natural disasters,
- protests and
- product recalls
Name Your Crisis
“We also work closely with clients to prepare scenarios unique to their company or industry,” he adds.
A quick-service restaurant brand, for example, may ask APCO to build a simulation that focuses on food safety and employment issues.
In addition, if a company wants outside people, such as journalists and government officials, included in an emPOWER crisis scenario, APCO employees can assume the roles. Hoff even mentions APCO employees assuming the role of a company CEO who is away from the office, unable to participate in crisis discussions.
Insurance Firm’s Simulation
Hoff explains how a recent simulation worked for a company in the insurance industry. The simulation included issues stemming from the pandemic and client-service disruptions to leadership transitions and tough media inquiries related to significant parts of the business.
“We based the simulation on concerns their executives articulated in pre-interviews with” us, “as well as our knowledge of crises similar clients have faced,” he says. A cross-functional team of eight leaders participated.
APCO had three main objectives:
- Test coordination around multi-department issues and assess how the team came together and responded
- Identify any gaps in coordination and highlight areas of strength; and
- Leverage the scenario and the company members’ performance to refine the draft crisis playbook
Afterward, APCO analyzed data from the simulation. This helped it identify which parts of the client company’s crisis playbook worked well and which needed adjustment.
Siloed During a Crisis
For example, during the simulation APCO noticed participants tended to share information and make preliminary decisions within their own departments only, rather than reaching out broadly to colleagues elsewhere in the company.
This type of silo behavior is far from unique. It has afflicted companies and organization for many years. Destroying silos, especially during a crisis, is critical.
In the case of the company in the emPOWER simulation, the lack of sharing with other departments meant key decisionmakers lacked information they needed “to be full crisis-management team participants,” Hoff says.
With this insight, APCO adjusted the company’s crisis protocol playbook to account for more inter-department knowledge-sharing when a crisis or issue begins to emerge.
APCO followed up this and every emPOWER crisis simulation it stages with a debrief and later a report. Many teams choose to share select insights and learnings with a broader group of staff, Hoff says.
When a company wishes, APCO also can record participant communication during the simulation via a conference line, Zoom or other platform, Hoff says. In addition, APCO can transcribe the communication and include it as part of its analysis.
Nobody knows when the pandemic will end. It seems certain, though, emPOWER’s flexibility to stage crisis simulations in a variety of work environments positions it well for the future.