Fortunately organisations rarely experience a crisis. However, badly handled a crisis can adversely affect staff safety, reputation and finances. Blueline can provide you with the skills, confidence and capability to take the right action and say the right thing at the right time whilst under intense pressure.

No crisis occurs in isolation, there will be partners and a wide range of stakeholders, there will frequently be media involvement. Effective crisis management does not just mean clearing up the mess, it means leaving all those critical relationships strengthened, not weakened.

Our Solution

Review

Blueline will review and assess the risks your organisation is vulnerable to. We will provide recommendations to develop robust crisis management plans and procedures in line with BS11200. These may be completely new or involve the development of your existing plans.

Crisis Management Plans

All our Crisis Management Plans will be bespoke to your organisation. The overarching objective will be to have ‘off the shelf’ plans available to a Crisis Management Team to use when faced with a fast moving and dynamic crisis situation. Read more »

Aide memoires will be included which will simply and clearly outline specific roles and responsibilities. These are essential for staff operating outside of their core roles in a high pressure situation and provide reassurance for them to operate confidently and efficiently. The clearly defined management structures and processes will ensure that the actions taken will stand scrutiny.

The Crisis Communications Strategy

The existence of a Crisis Communications Strategy can greatly reduce the stress, chaos, expense and disruption caused by any number of potential crises.
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Drawing on our first-hand experience of crisis management, we develop bespoke and comprehensive plans for organisations wishing to be fully prepared before an incident occurs. This practical manual contains steps to be taken when a crisis occurs and encapsulates critical information with which all staff should be familiar, together with post-crisis messaging to enable your organisation to move forwards after an event.
The preparation of Crisis Management Plans and the Crisis Communications Strategy is thorough, usually involving a site visit, interviews with senior staff and research into your current processes and procedures. The final strategy is developed in consultation with your team.

Implementation

Staff awareness of the crisis management plan and their roles within it are essential. This can be achieved by training in a number of ways. We provide realistic table top exercises, case studies and crisis simulations. Specific role related training is also available.

Media

The way in which an organisation communicates publicly about a crisis in the first few hours and days impacts significantly on its future viability: public perception and investor confidence is shaped by the tone and nature of early media coverage and on the public perception of that organisation. Media interest is intense and can be overwhelming. Read more »

The key to protecting your reputation is preparation. Even giving the most basic level of consideration to what could go wrong and how a crisis might be handled can make all the difference to the future of an organisation. Effective media interviews are important, but standing in front of a television camera can feel like an intimidating and frightening place to be. Fears about saying the ‘wrong thing’ – or of not being able to remember what to say at all – are common and normal.
We run dynamic, interactive Crisis Communications Workshops which prepare senior management teams for reputation-threatening situations, provide a safe opportunity to face the cameras and equip participants with a range of strategies for managing significant media interest. Every workshop is bespoke in order to meet the specific needs of your organisation.

Review

We advise that regular exercises are carried out so ensure that staff carrying out these unfamiliar roles are ‘match fit’ and that a regular review and assessment is carried out to ensure the plan is current and takes into account new and emerging threats.

Response

Blueline Consultants are available to respond in the event your organisation experiences a crisis. They will provide advice and assistance based on years of experience gained working in crisis situations ranging from reputational risk incidents through to terrorist attack and kidnaps.

Post Incident Review

All Crisis Management Plans will advise that following a crisis a ‘post incident review’ is carried out. Blueline can assist in providing support to the staff involved in the crisis. We will also analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the response and assist in the development of processes from the lessons learnt if necessary.