Writing Assignment: Module 12

Question 1

What is a business crisis?

Answer 1

significant business disruption with a direct impact on the lives, health, and welfare of an organization and its employees

Question 2

What is crisis management?

Answer 2

the set of actions taken by an organization in response to an emergency situation in an effort to minimize injury or loss of life

Question 3

How are crises related to incidents and disasters?

Answer 3

The critical difference between crises and incidents/disasters is that a crisis includes potential impact to employees’ lives

Question 4

What is a sudden crisis? How is it different from a smoldering crisis?

Answer 4

occurs when an organization’s operations are disrupted without warning. It is an event that has a high probability of drawing news coverage and could cause problems for stakeholders, including employees, investors, customers, and suppliers.

is a problem or situation that is not generally known inside or outside the organization. If or when it is revealed, it may generate unfavorable news coverage and cause unanticipated expenses or penalties.

Question 5

What is emergency response?

Answer 5

actions taken in order to manage the immediate physical, health, and environmental impacts resulting from an incident.

Question 6

What is crisis communications?

Answer 6

steps taken to communicate what is happening or has happened to internal and external audiences.

Question 7

What is humanitarian assistance?

Answer 7

actions taken to meet the psychological and emotional needs of various stakeholders

Question 8

List the general CM recommended practices.

Answer 8

Build contingency plans, identify teams, train staff, and rehearse scenarios before a crisis occurs.
Verify that all staff members throughout the organization know that only designated crisis management team members may represent the company.
Plan to react as fast as possible because the first few hours establish the baseline narrative that the media will use for most ongoing reporting.
Make sure your plan processes are of the highest quality by employing expert reviews and professional crisis management consultants.
Make it part of your organizational culture to always give the most complete and accurate information possible in a given situations, because manipulating the factsoften has negative consequences-far worse than the embarrassment or whatever the reason was for a cover-up.
As choices are considered, adopt the long view and consider long-term effects as well as the short-term losses that may occur.

Question 9

What is the CM planning committee, and how does it differ from the CM team?

Answer 9

responsible for some critical tasks when preparing to plan. Among these are the gathering of information about existing vulnerabilities, analyzing the current state of systems and network vulnerabilities, collecting current plans, and assessing those plans as to how they impact the anticipated crisis plans. In addition, they must lay out the comprehensive future plans that are intended to supplant what is now in place.

Question 10

Who should be on the CM planning committee? Who should be on the CM team?

Answer 10

The CM planning team should include a broad representation from the various parts of the organization that will be most impacted by the plans when they are put into effect. It should also include sufficient management representation so there is a champion who is able to accomplish the necessary tasks and marshal the proper level of support from senior ranks of management.

The CM team will typically include the following members:
Team leader
Communications coordinator
Emergency services coordinator
Other members as needed

Question 11

What is a head count? How and when is it used in crisis management?

Answer 11

the process of accounting for all personnel- that is, determining each individual’s whereabouts- during and emergency

Question 12

What are the critical success factors for CM planning?

Answer 12

“those few things that must go well to ensure success for a manager or an organization, and, therefore, they represent those managerial or enterprise areas that must be given special and continual attention to bring about high performance.”

Question 13

What sections should be included in a CM plan?

Answer 13

Purpose
Crisis management planning committee
Crisis types
Crisis management team structure
Responsibility and control
Implementation
Crisis management protocols
Crisis management plan priorities
Appendices

Question 14

What is the chain of command?

Answer 14

list of officials, ranging from an individual’s immediate supervisor to the top executive of the organization.

Question 15

What is an assembly area? When and how is it used in CM?

Answer 15

An assembly area is an area where people should gather in the event of a specific type of emergency, to facilitate a quick headcount.

Question 16

What is PTSD?

Answer 16

PTSD is a psychotic disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults.

Question 17

What are EAPs? How are they used in CM?

Answer 17

employee assistance programs which provide a variety of counseling services to assist employees in coping with the changes in life resulting from surviving a crisis.

Question 18

When dealing with the loss of staff, what strategies can be employed?

Answer 18

There are a number of techniques to deal with the loss of staff, including: cross-training, job and task rotation, and redundancy.

Question 19

What federal agencies may be involved during a crisis? What role does each play?

Answer 19

The federal agencies that may be involved during a crisis are DHS, FEMA, the Secret Service, FBI, and HAZMAT. DHS is specifically organized to handle crises, especially those involving threats to the safety of U.S. citizens and potential damage to this country’s infrastructure. FEMA aims to support citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards. The Secret Service protects high-level politicians and is also responsible for investigating crimes related to financial securities. The FBI deals with many crimes that are potential crises. HAZMAT agencies are trained to deal with radiological, biological, or chemical threats.

Question 20

What is succession planning (SP)? Why is it an important part of CM planning?

Answer 20

the process that enables an organization to cope with any loss of personnel with a minimum degree of disruption to the functionality of the organization, by predefining the promotion of internal personnel usually by position. In a CM plan, there is a possibility for personnel loss when a crisis occurs, so it is important to have SP to ensure business continuity following a crisis