Crisis Management

A regular and exclusive series addressing some of the major challenges facing SMEs today. Icehouse Insights also highlights some of the possible solutions you can weave into your business to solve common issues.

Even the best-managed businesses can be hit by a crisis at any moment and, after observing the events of the past couple of years in particular, it’s clear that crisis management has ever been higher up the board meeting agenda.

Over the next few pages this Icehouse Insights will identify the possible types of crisis to look out for, explain why management is so important to avoid business
interruption, and then how to put a plan in place for success.

Crisis management is the specific process or strategy in place to deal with any unexpected event that damages a business’ operations.

Crisis management specialists generally categorise these crises as financial, personnel, organisational, technological, and natural – anything that interrupts or severely limits business continuity.

So what could a crisis look like? How will you know what to do when the business is hit, and how can a business crisis management plan make sure it doesn’t happen again?

CRISIS MANAGEMENT VS RISK?

Crisis and risk management are often confused terms because they both work towards solving major threats, but the major difference between the two is that crisis management is reactive and takes place after the event, while risk management is proactive.

For the purposes of this Insights, we'll put them together because both are expected to decrease any problems that arise from a crisis to ensure that disruption is kept to a minimum and that operations can be up and running at capacity as quickly as possible.

Let's choose a basic case scenario. Imagine a ground floor flooding at a retail SME. Think of all the preventative measures you would need to have in place... Read the full insights by clicking below.

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