Elements of a Crisis Management Plan [Video]

In part two of this five-part series, Furia Rubel B2B Marketing and Public Relations CEO, Gina Rubel, discusses the six major elements in a crisis management plan (CMP). While the focus of the presentation was on community bank crisis management, the concepts apply across the board to all businesses and in particular law firms, accounting firms, financial service providers, nonprofits, municipalities and other business which should be concerned with website hacking and data breaches.

Below is a textual overview of the video.

There are six major elements in a crisis management plan (CMP). They include:

Crisis Response Team (CRT): Identify your CRT, command post, and create emergency contact list: CRT manager, spokesperson/s, legal team, security and safety team. Not everyone can or should be on the CRT. Think about who you should have in place depending on the scenario. For example, if a bank website is hacked, you want to be sure that an IT representative is on the CRT. The same holds true for a security breach: make sure there is a security officer who is trained and knowledgeable on the team.

Scenarios: Develop scenarios and incident management checklists

Policies: Develop relevant policies, a media policy, a social media policy and others. These polices should already be in place in your employee manual maintained by your human relations department.

Monitoring: Implement monitoring tools for all media, esp. social media sites.

Training: Train all members of the crisis response team.

Testing and Refining: Conduct mock crisis drills, refine the CMP with post-mortem knowledge and findings. This is one of the most critical steps that most people forget.

At all stages of a crisis, it is important to remember that communicating with key internal and/or external audiences is critical.