As a first step, regular checks and exercises are crucial to ensure the systems work well. But acquiring a tool is in itself not protection against potential crises. If well set up, the tool will certainly be useful but must be tested regularly to ensure it is adapted to your way of working.
Personalising the tool to your business needs is a pivotal step towards maximizing your crisis management response. To achieve this, we recommend:
- Including the tool in crisis exercises (at least once a year): these exercises must be accompanied by constructive recommendations and a corrective action plan;
- Proposing a “question box” for the tool’s administrators, to answer the various questions expected from employees when using the tool;
- Creating dedicated support documents (eg: user guide, training materials, awareness materials, welcome guide, etc.)
- Reviewing the system (annually) and adapting to new functionalities as updates come through.
Finally, all these actions have one main goal: to embed the chosen tool into your corporate culture. Once the tool is an integral, routine and accepted part of your way of working, the change management objective will have been achieved.
Whilst this process may take a few months to become fully embedded, once achieved it will improve the crisis management culture of your company, making processes more efficient, and shaping employees’ ability to respond and adapt.
