The vital role of HR leveraging Your Business Crisis Management Team

Crises happen when you least expect it. Then you need to have an organization that is ready to mobilize. It's about good leadership. And HR.

If you are the HR manager in a company that is affected by a serious crisis, you must prepare for working days in an extreme stressful situation. The first thing you should do is take a breath and calm down - then you need to get an overview.

A crisis comes suddenly and unexpectedly - and it is serious. If not, there would not have been a crisis. Therefore, the company should have completed training in strategic crisis management in advance so that everyone is prepared when the crisis occurs.

Set aside enough time to practice crisis management in the organization - and build a culture that identifies potential crises early. It will be of great help when the crisis occurs.

But still, the conditions will be different when it first happens and often it will lead to a long period of high work pressure in a very demanding and unfamiliar situation.

1 - Get an overview

The first thing you should do is take a small step back and get an overview of the situation; Think about what you should prioritize, who you need to involve by employees and who you should ask for help in and outside the company. Remember that you may also need relief at home when the crisis is going on.

A poorly managed crisis can have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, it is important to enable the organization to deal with crises, before the crisis occurs. Even then, there will be a number of challenges that must be solved ad hoc because the map does not match the terrain. Crises come suddenly and unexpectedly and can cause great damage. That is why they are called crises.

A crisis can occur exactly on the day when you arrive late for work because you have slept poorly, half the management team has left for a conference and the head of security is on sick leave, Ole Andre Br?ten points out. Braten is an organizational psychologist and management developer with crisis management as a special field. He has also written books on the subject and taught crisis management at the Police Academy.

It is when the crisis occurs that you regret that you have not involved the entire company in the security work, he says. Mapping out the complete crisis management plan is vital.

Let's say you start as an HR director in a medium-sized business. What do you want to do to enable your business to deal with crises? I would have obtained an overview of which crises could affect the company, how to deal with these and what routines the company has for crisis management as of today. When a crisis occurs, you have to act quickly under great pressure and there is a lot you have to deal with.

If you are close to the organization, you have a greater opportunity to avert the crises. This applies whether it is warning cases, accidents or other crises that may occur, says Br?ten

2 - Stay close to the organization

To explain what he means by being close to the organization, he uses an imaginary example with two principals at each school. One stands at the gate when students and teachers arrive in the morning. He greets and chats, has monthly employee interviews and the threshold is low for the principal's office.

The other spends all his time in the office and staff and students pay little attention to him except when they are called to the principal's office. It is very likely that the latter has a risk and safety analysis standing in a folder in the office - but it is the former principal who knows what is happening in the workplace.

He is more likely to detect security risks, such as whether there is a student who needs to be followed up extra, whether there are threats against employees and how these incidents can be prevented. This is also the case in other companies.

Leaders who are close know the most about risk and prevention, because they have good contact with those who work in production. It is those who work in the front line who often know the most about what accidents and unwanted incidents can occur and how to prevent them.

This competence is needed to be able to make a good contingency plan, know how to best train for crisis management and talk to employees about safety and prevention.

Then you are better equipped when the crisis arises. It is easy to say that you have done a risk and safety analysis and believe that you have done what is required, but you have to create a culture for crisis management in the company. The assessment and action of each individual employee plays a crucial role when the crisis arises. All levels in the organization must therefore be prepared and trained on how crises should be handled, he says

3 - Make crisis management part of the leadership training

When you are in the middle of a demanding situation, it is important to keep your head cool. Important decisions must be made under unfamiliar and demanding conditions. If you train as a soldier or police officer, crisis management plays an important role in the training. In management educations, on the other hand, there is a shortage.

* If you are going on a summit in the winter time, familiarize yourself with the risk of landslides and what kind of equipment and behavior you need to survive a dangerous situation. If you are well prepared and have thought through how to act in a crisis, then it can help you cope with the situation. So are companies. Unfortunately, few managers are prepared to handle a crisis, says Br?ten. HR is a vital part of the Crisis Management team in this regard - both as a resource to the executive team and to the employees.

What should the management team, as a group, do to prepare for crises?

* The management team is exposed to a lot of stress during a crisis. Sometimes you experience that there can be loud discussions and disclaimers. That is the opposite of what you need. In a crisis situation, everyone must be able to handle everything, because the framework can be completely different than when the crisis plan was made. You are guaranteed to face challenges for which you do not have good enough plans.

* You are dependent on your colleagues when a crisis arises, and this also applies to a very high degree within the management team. Therefore, it is important to have a good working environment and open communication where you can also talk about what is difficult. It is only if you talk openly about problems that you can do something about it. Then it often turns out that there are others who can contribute to a good solution, Ole Andre Br?ten.

This is an expert of an interview with Ole Andre Braten in the Norwegian magazine Leadership and Management (Personal og ledelse, nr 1 - 2019)