Real credit to you for the content and delivery on the day to propagate the training exercise & plenary content, pace and orchestration
Crisis management is the first stage of an organisation’s response to a crisis, setting the tone for the entire recovery effort. This exercise uses a realistic and immersive scenario to challenge responders to manage a crisis, while simultaneously validating the structure and content of the organisation’s response plan(s).
The complexity, length and delivery method of the exercise can be varied according to the requirements of the organisation. For example, a two-hour ‘desktop’ exercise might use PowerPoint injects and facilitator prompts to guide responders through a disruptive scenario, while a four-hour ‘full simulation’ exercise might incorporate role players, simulated media interactions and fast-paced updates to offer a closer representation of a real-life crisis response.
Defining a crisis for your organisation, and consideration of the current crisis landscape.
Introduction to the organisation’s crisis management document(s), ensuring all team members are comfortable with their roles and understand their responsibilities.
Use of a realistic and challenging scenario to rehearse the team’s response to a crisis event.
Identification of any areas for improvement in documents, as well as any training requirements. These will be detailed by WTW in a post-exercise report.
An improved understanding of your organisation’s response processes and procedures, and your role within that structure.
Increasing the confidence and competence of you and your fellow responders to deal with a crisis of any type.
Validating response plans and identifying areas for improvement.
Undertaking a crisis management exercise will support your team in responding quickly and confidently in a crisis situation. The exercise will also highlight any gaps and areas for improvement within your existing plans.
The exercise is aimed at teams involved in strategic crisis response (for example, crisis management teams or major incident teams). Primary and deputy members of these response teams should all be included where possible.
For further information please contact: rod.ratsma@wtwco.com or jamie.donald@wtwco.com
Yes, recently
Yes, but over 2 years ago
No, never and not interested
No but this is something we should consider
Our client, Suntory, is a global leader in consumer-packaged goods, producing and distributing a diverse portfolio of beverages (amongst other things) around the world. Working with the GB and Ireland business unit, we were asked to develop and deliver a multi-faceted crisis management scenario exercise that would:
Rehearse the incident response in a realistic and controlled manner.
Assist with embedding the principles of incident management.
Increase the confidence and competence of personnel to respond to an incident.
Assess the incident management plan and its use.
Identify any actions to improve resilience and response.
And finally, in keeping with the client’s philosophies, we needed to make the exercise engaging, dynamic and fun.
The client has been working with WTW for a number of years, and indeed we developed and delivered a similar exercise in the past. So, to bring an additional dimension to the event and to complement some work ongoing within the client’s organisation, we included a plenary discussion designed to explore the impacts of the incident on health and wellbeing. Using issues raised during the scenario exercise as a point of reference, the plenary session explored psychosocial risk, duty of care and how to manage the risk and mitigate its effects.
Following the exercise, we provided a comprehensive report with actionable recommendations. We believe that, following the exercise and implementation of our recommendations, the client’s ability to respond effectively to an incident will increase.
Attendee feedback following the event provided a 91% overall satisfaction score, with delegates expressing very strongly that they felt better equipped to deal with a genuine incident following the exercise.
Guy Mathias, Director Risk and Operations at Suntory commented: “real credit to you for the content and delivery on the day to propagate the training exercise & plenary content, pace and orchestration.” His colleague Nicholas Reed, Risk Manager added: “well done to you and the team, the feedback (from my colleagues) demonstrates the value the attendees rated your delivery…”
A challenge for next time – we have been asked to come up with an “even more complex and mind-boggling scenario.” We’d better get our thinking caps on!