What is this published document about?
This is a European technical specification giving organizations good practice guidance on how to prepare for, anticipate, respond to and recover from crisis.
Who is this published document for?
It can be used by any organization, regardless of location, size, type, industry, structure or sector.
It will be used by managers with strategic responsibility for delivering the organization’s crisis management capability. Specifically, it’s for those who operate under the direction and within policy of top management in:
- Implementing crisis plans and structures
- Maintaining and assuring the procedures associated with this capability
Why should you use this published document?
Crises present unique challenges that can be dynamic, unpredictable and difficult to manage. To plug a gap in advice for private sector organizations, this document provides organizations with invaluable material on how to develop their crisis management capability.
It will help strategic decision makers plan, implement, establish, operate, monitor, review, maintain and continually improve a crisis management capability. This capability is not normally part of routine organizational management and should be consciously and deliberately built and sustained through capital, resource and time investment throughout the organization.
Specifically, the document provides guidance on:
- Understanding the context and challenges of crisis management
- Developing an organization’s crisis management capability through preparedness
- Recognizing the complexities facing a crisis team in action
- Communicating successfully during a crisis
- Reviewing and learning
NOTE 1: While it’s important to be aware of human and cultural factors, it’s not the purpose of this document to examine these areas in detail.
NOTE 2: The document distinguishes between incidents or disruptions and a crisis. The latter is defined as “any unprecedented or extraordinary event or situation that threatens an organization and requires a strategic, adaptive, and timely response in order to preserve its viability and integrity”. As such this document is not intended for emergency and incident response and does not cover interoperability or command and control or business continuity management systems.