Crisis Management & Leadership in the Public Sector

We live in a ‘VUCA’ world (volatile, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) and leaders and organizations alike must learn to embrace it. When the unexpected happens, it is too late to make the crisis management plans there and then.

No one can fully prevent incidents from happening, but with well-structured preparedness you can limit the damage, take care of those involved and attempt to limit the impact on your organization. This program outlines an approach and the ways of thinking to be embraced in order to ride the wave and not end up swirling in the surf. This program helps to ensure your organization has the appropriate crisis and contingency plans/people, communications and media management in place, so that these can be activated effectively and calmly as soon as a crisis occurs.

Is your organization prepared for the more extreme, unusual and infrequent occurrences that threaten your staff and operations including fires, explosions, terrorist activities (such as bomb threats and suspect packages), storm damage, product contamination, customer accusations and of course pandemics?

Participants on Crisis Management Leadership course will be able to learn:

• Prepare for crisis to minimize staff injury or down-time, maintain morale, protect and even enhance reputation.
• Create, administer and update emergency and crisis management plans.
• Form an anti-crisis committee with defined roles and responsibilities.
• Role-based checklists for different incident types
• Task distribution and rules of organizational action
• Information management and communications management
• Rules of organizational conduct in an emergency

Crisis Management Leadership course is designed for professionals who need to conduct risk assessments and contingency planning and crisis management as part of their job and who need to produce effective initiatives.

• Senior Executives, Department Heads, Managers and Supervisors
• Emergency & Crisis Management staff in the public & private sectors
• Health & Safety Professionals
• Project planning & implementation management professionals
• Professionals in health care, public safety, and government agencies

This highly practical and results-oriented Crisis Management Leadership course is based on adult learning concept. The facilitator will give plenty of input and then help participants to make sense of the themes through discussion and practice. It incorporates short inspiring demonstrations, role play and much practice to enhance learning. There will be ample time for Q&A, discussions with -return to work- action planning. The course will reinforce key concepts within an inspiring and engaging learning environment.

Pre & Post course assessments will be used to measure the effectiveness of this training and measure the skill and ability of participants.

• Identify potential risks and harmful events
• Key terminology, principles and rules of action to be taken?
• Utilize best practice crises management learnt (identified during Covid-19 for example)
• Integrate continuity and contingency planning at organizational and departmental and operational levels
• Create, document and communicate your contingency plans and procedures

• Establish an anti-crisis committee,
• Deciding ‘Terms of Reference’ (goal, authority of the committee, objectives & outcome measures, in/out of scope, who to involve, role/responsibilities, frequency of meetings and ways of working etc.)
• Designing and writing mitigation plans
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• Conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
• Assessing threats and risks
• Determining how employees/management should behave during a crisis
• Maintaining, training and exercising for (possible) crisis events

• Deciding internal/external communications and PR responses
• Stages of a crisis and what to say/not to say and how to say it during each
• Updating and maintaining your contingency plans
• Training and conducting workplace test exercises
• Managing information and learning from crisis management

• Participants will design a crisis management policy and plan and how to form a crisis management team who must prepare to effectively control and communicate during a work centered crisis
• Program review and workplace action planning