When your company is faced with a crisis, you need to have a plan of action.
This includes knowing how you’re going to communicate what has happened and who will be in charge of handling it. The more prepared your team members are for this eventuality, the better they will be at keeping the situation under control. In this blog post we’ll discuss 4 steps that can help your organization train their employees on how to handle various crises, as well as what tools are available to help them stay successful in any situation that arises!
Create a Training Program That Requires Regular Activities to be Completed
You need to create a program that requires regular activities to be completed. If you can stick with this for at least six months, your odds of seeing some sort of change are good. You also want it to keep things interesting so team members don’t get bored before the duration is up! Whatever activities you choose, make sure its challenging enough but not too difficult where there isn’t any progress being made or motivation building towards completing the next task next week/month etc. Not only should they provide a challenge, but also something rewarding when completed successfully will help as well. We often see gaps in crisis management teams and their roles and responsibilities. Here are 3 activity examples that help bridge those gaps:
a. Short fun quizzes on the roles and responsibilities of team members
b. Activation of the team(s) at random times (weekends and nights included)
c. Create short case study videos with relevant lessons learned
Reward Crisis Management Team Members and Employees with Points and Prizes
Points and Prizes are the perfect reward to recognize outstanding contributions and for continual awareness around roles and responsibilities. Reward your crisis management team members and employees with points that can be redeemed for corporate discounts, gift cards or even other rewards like a day off for the winners! Points should only be given out if they were earned by completing tasks that contributed directly towards the crisis management training goals. This will ensure teams members and employees understand how their work impacts the company’s bottom line so they feel appreciated instead of unappreciated for all their hard word. Holding contests where you award “points” as prizes is another great way to encourage teamwork among staff members while simultaneously encouraging them to complete certain key tasks within a set time period. Gamification and digital points and trophies are an easy way to accomplish a reward program. The ultimate goal is to keep the crisis management team members and others that are involved in the training program engaged.
Create Short Crisis Simulation Scenarios That are Relatable to Real-life Situations
Crisis simulation scenarios are an effective way to prepare your training program participants for real problems. This is especially important if you’re working with managers that will become the first line of defense when a crisis occurs, as they need all the practice they can get! A great idea would be to create multiple simulations with different degrees of severity. Encourage discussion around how each scenario would be handled which helps them learn from mistakes and prevents future ones during actual emergencies.
Related: Building and Maintaining Crisis Management Skills
Create a Training System to Monitor Results and Effectiveness of the Training
One way to know whether your business is receiving value from the team training program you have created and implemented is by tracking employee performance over time. If it has been a while since the last session of crisis management team training, take initiative and arrange for another one. Whether or not employees will be receptive to this depends on how often they relish participating in such sessions; however, if an emergency situation were to occur outside of those scheduled meetings, then there would definitely be cause for concern! No matter what type or frequency of coaching your company implements as part of its crisis preparedness planning, monitoring results can help improve future risk mitigation strategies. It’s possible that no discernible changes may emerge after only a few sessions. It may take several months for results to become apparent. The best way to determine whether your crisis management team training efforts are indeed effective is by comparing the before-and-after statistics of past crises and exercises, or near misses at work – which you should already be keeping track of!
What are some other ways to better train your crisis management team members?