Managing a crisis with a remote team

With the Government scaling-up its response to Coronavirus, the need to work from home has been brought front and centre. But what does this mean for your organisation and its crisis response to Coronavirus?

 At Crisis Solutions many of our clients are already working from home and this raises the question – ‘Are we able to manage Coronavirus along with other potential crises remotely?’

The reality is that the challenges your crisis team face when convening as a team in person are amplified when managing the response via conference facilities remotely. What we call ‘activating’ effectively becomes harder. Does everyone have the correct conference line details? Does everyone have a copy of the relevant plans at home and can they join effectively from home (especially if other family members are at home)?

Information management also presents challenges – Do you have the ability to log actions and decision made online so that all members of the team can keep track of what has been done?  How often will the team convene on a call to present new information and do we have a process for bringing the team up to speed?

Organisations must also consider how managing a crisis remotely over a number of months  should be handled. Can your crisis team maintain a high level of response over the long term? Are deputies in place for members of your crisis management teams? There is also the concern about other potential crises hitting at the same time as Coronavirus. For example, can your IT team manage a potential cyber attack remotely?

These are just a few of the challenges you could face over the next few weeks as an increasing number of organisations work from home.

Our message is clear, you need to practise how your crisis team responds to incidents remotely and stress test your plans should the spread of the virus worsen.