Planning to care for people when crisis strikes

Incidents like the Germanwings air crash, Alton Towers’ Smiler accident and recent terrorist atrocities underline the importance of organisations preparing to address human trauma as a key part of their crisis management planning.

When disaster strikes, your stakeholders (and your employees in particular) will be asking two questions about their leaders:

• Are they competent to manage this crisis?
  
• Do they care about its impact on us?

Succeeding in answering the second question requires planning and training ahead of the event. When a crisis strikes at the heart of an organisation, supporting those experiencing psychological distress adds additional layers of complexity to a situation already presenting operational and reputational challenges, and you need to be geared up for this.

Families, employees, customers and clients may all suffer psychological trauma as a result of an incident. Being ready to support them is not only the responsible thing to do, it is also the starting point for effective crisis management.

For guidelines on how to care for people under challenging circumstances, download our white paper below.