Managing Crisis In Business

“The Secret of crisis management is not good vs the bad, it’s preventing the bad from getting worse” — Andy Gilman

Starting a new Business gives opportunities to millions of challenges. The plan takes off and promises better opportunities. Then suddenly everything falls apart due to an unexpected glitch. Crisis is inevitable in business but they also help us to face bigger challenges.

Before starting any business, it is a common concern to avoid crises but then if it happens, what should we do?

Basic steps to be followed to avoid crisis-

Having a proper plan with proper implementation is of utmost priority during crisis days. The plan includes the following steps :

a. Identify the common crisis that your business can face

1. Natural disaster ( completely unexpected).

2. Financial instability

3. Technological crisis

4. Personal crisis

5. Crisis of malevolence

b. Identify the impact due to each kind of crisis

Determining the impacts due to different crises on company, employees, reputation and marketing help us to understand and plan in an optimized way.

Some of the impacts are-

1. Reputation loss

2. Increasing expenses as compared to the profit

3. Loss of potential customers

4. Reduced marketing

c. Different ways to tackle Crisis

1. Responsive crises management-

Better known as ‘anticipating the potential crisis beforehand’ or reducing it’s effect to some extent. Situational Crises Communication Theory (SCCT) can be used to prepare a strategy to handle it in better way.

Example- Informing the employees about the possible crisis and about the reduction of salary if situation is at the worst possible case.

2. Proactive Crisis Management-

It is better used in case of crisis due to natural disasters.

Example- Odisha is affected by cyclone almost every year but small businessman came out with solution like building high raised houses to prevent any damage of property.

3. Recovery Crises management-

Sometimes crisis unexpected. Back on 14th December 2020, Google saw a possible outrage as most of the people were working from home. In many other cases some of the biggest companies faces unexpected crisis due to hackers.

At that point of time all we need was a special team for tackling this problem with a proper plan and strategy.

d. Creating the special team

This team should include the company’s experts. Consultants play a major role here. The HRs, seniors and also the employees have to come up with innovative ideas to face the upcoming challenges. The frequent meetings and discussions will help to come up with a better actions.

e. What are the plans to be made?

The team should discuss about how to regain trust among the customers. They probably need brand ambassadors for better publicity of their products. Better profits with optimized resources should be the company’s main motto at that point of time. Recovering the losses should also be one of their main agenda. Product quality should be better than before for wide popularity .

f. Familiarizing employees with the company’s new strategy

The employees have a great impact on the company’s reputation. Therefore, work should be divided properly, with proper implementation and should be checked on regular basis. Meetings, presentations and working models can help them understand the strategy in a better way.

What to do after the condition is improving?

We should never settle for less. We should not come to a halt even if the company’s condition starts improving. We must analyze our company’s statistics over and over again . This will help to create a strong market force. Strategy should be renewed over the years for better profits. Innovative ideas along with a strong, creative team can help establishing a successful company and tackling any possible crisis.