Crisis Management Strategies in the Workplace: Your Guide to a Timely, Effective Response

What you’re about to read might scare you, but it doesn’t have to: Your next workplace crisis is always around the corner. 

This statement isn’t a scare tactic. In reality, it’s an inevitable fact that the most successful organizations understand at their core. 69% of business leaders reported they’ve experienced a crisis over the last 5 years, according to a recent study by PWC — are you prepared to respond if one strikes your organization?

Top business and HR leaders know that developing the right crisis management strategy benefits the whole organization, even when they believe a crisis isn’t likely.

Here are the tools and information you need in order to provide timely support before, during, and after a workplace crisis.

What is a workplace crisis?

A workplace crisis is a singular incident or ongoing situation that puts your organization and/or its employees in immediate risk of harm. These events are sudden, unexpected, and delicate to handle. Unlike a typical workplace conflict or challenge, a workplace crisis places greater pressure on your organization to resolve it rapidly in order to mitigate any damage done. 

Every workplace will experience obstacles, but not every challenge is considered a “crisis” or “critical incident.” This distinction is important, as each requires a different level of response, consideration, and speed.

Examples of workplace crises include:

• Cyber security breaches
• PR crises and/or fictitious rumors 
• Natural disasters
• Death or severe injury of a co-worker
• Employee misconduct
• Product recalls
• Financial fraud

Workplace crisis management strategies for a more rapid recovery

How quickly you respond to a workplace crisis correlates with how fast and effectively your organization can recover. The most effective crisis management strategies address the entire timeline, focusing on proactive, reactive, and recovery approaches. 

Here are some steps you can take before, during, and after a workplace crisis to develop an effective crisis response strategy.

Pre-Crisis

Assemble a Crisis Management Committee

Before a crisis strikes, your team should know who’s responsible to respond, and what they’re responsible for. Form a crisis management committee that’s representative of your organization, including stakeholders from different teams, locations, seniority levels, and backgrounds. 

This group should be instrumental in identifying and planning for the list of crises that can hit your organization. To keep workloads manageable, prioritize planning for events that are most likely to occur and/or that have potential to cause the most harm. Include in this group individuals with talents that will help most in a crisis, including skills in communication, technology, and leadership.

Practice Scenarios

Fire drills, rehearsals, simulations — whatever you want to call it, practice in crisis management makes perfect. 

Periodically, run through scenarios within your crisis management committee to stress test the plans you’ve put in place. Center these fire drills around the risks most likely to occur in your organization. These simulations can be as formal as simulating true-to-life incidents, or as informal as thought experiments within your group. 

One of the most helpful questions you can ask when evaluating your plan is this: What’s the most likely reason our plan would fail? Once you’ve identified potential gaps or weaknesses, work within your committee to help strengthen your strategy.

Document processes, roles, and responsibilities

The time between when you create a crisis management strategy and when a crisis actually occurs is anyone’s guess. Practice helps, but documenting the processes, roles, and responsibilities decided upon gives your team a solid foundation when it’s time to respond. Instead of worrying about who needs to do what, documentation frees up your crisis management committee to think more critically when it’s needed most.

Pro Tip: Even the best plans can go awry. Partnering with a comprehensive EAP like Carebridge will ensure your employees and leadership team are guaranteed in-the-moment support during a workplace crisis or critical incident.

Mid-Crisis

Take Responsibility

Sometimes, it’s hard to move forward in times of crisis when members of your team are busy speculating who’s to blame. Take responsibility as a leader in your organization, regardless of your role in the making of the incident.  

Playing the blame game wastes time, creates animosity, and delays critical response. This important step of taking ownership paves the way for an effective response, positioning you as a trusted captain to guide your organization out of harm’s way.

Encourage Employees to Use Their EAP Services

If you offer an EAP at your organization, remind your team of the supportive services available to them. EAPs like Carebridge provide personalized, confidential support above and beyond what managers and fellow employees can offer. 

In times of crisis, individualized support can be critical. Your team members may come from different backgrounds, family situations, socioeconomic circumstances, and more. The services they receive from an EAP can be life changing, providing them the necessary tools, resources, and support they need to cope with the fallout from a workplace crisis.

Increasing utilization of your EAP can also free up managers and HR leaders to focus on mitigating the crisis, rather than extending extra support to their teams.

Take Time to Offer Compassionate, One-to-One Support

It’s hard to overstate the importance of empathetic leadership in managing effective teams. And when it comes to navigating a workplace crisis, compassionate leaders are needed more than ever. 

In the middle of a crisis, everything can seem like it’s on fire. Still, take the time to offer one-to-one, empathetic support to members of your team. Consider offering flexible working arrangements, providing extra personal days off, or simply scheduling one-on-one meetings so team members have a safe space to share their concerns.

Post-Crisis

Share Appreciation

Employees who feel routinely appreciated are less likely to feel burnt out and disengaged at work. Often during a crisis, employees are asked to either put in more time to help navigate the incident, or continue working as normal amidst the period of duress. Both scenarios can be challenging. And, if not properly recognized, employees can feel a lack of purpose in their work.

Share appreciation to your teams after a crisis for their dedication, contributions, or simply for hanging in there during an abnormal time. Even small messages of gratitude contribute enormously to employees’ mental health and wellness at work.  

Invite Feedback and Sharing of Experience

Recognizing bias is a critical skill that all HR and organizational leaders should have. We grow our perspective by inviting others to share their own experiences. What may have looked like successful crisis management to you, may have looked differently to other members of your organization, so it’s important to hear other points of view. 

After a crisis, take the time to solicit feedback from everyone touched by the incident. Ask how things went, what could have gone better, and what support they still might need to overcome the effects of the crisis.

Review Your Crisis Management Strategy

To mount an even stronger, more effective response to whatever workplace crisis happens next, it’s important to review how the last one unfolded. 

Your crisis management strategy should maintain a level of flexibility to allow for growth. After a crisis, answer these questions to identify how your plan needs to evolve:

• Was this crisis predictable? If yes, how could we have noticed it sooner?
• Did our crisis management strategy mobilize quickly enough?
• Did our response effectively mitigate the crisis? How could it have responded better?
• Did we communicate clearly and consistently enough?
• How can we incorporate feedback received from our team?

In a Crisis, Turn to Carebridge

When it comes to creating a crisis management strategy in the workplace, don’t go it alone. Carebridge EAP can offer the support your organization needs to make it through effectively— reach out to our team today.