BCI Crisis Management Report 2024

Frequent plan activations

This year’s research shows that the majority of organizations (75.1%) have activated their crisis management plans over the past 12 months. This is the first time the report has gathered information about activation frequency, and this high percentage clearly highlights the ongoing need for well-trained crisis management professionals across all sectors, the requirement of continual review and improvement of existing practices, and the necessity of experienced and well exercised crisis management teams that can rapidly and effectively respond to incidents.

Extreme weather events top the list for crisis activation plans in 2024

Over the past twelve months, a wide variety of threats have triggered crisis management responses. Extreme weather events top the list, with third-party failures and cyber-attacks taking joint second place. Other less frequent activation events include civil unrest, conflict, vandalism, or activism, and health and safety incidents.

This broad range of incidents indicates the need for a crisis management team with a diverse range of perspectives and plans that are adaptable and flexible enough to address the effects of events, whatever the cause.

Reflective practices boost plan effectiveness, but lack senior management participation

46.4% of organizations (the highest noted in this study) report conducting post-incident/after-action reviews, highlighting an elevated perception of the importance of reflective practice, and ensuring ‘lessons-learned’ are incorporated into a continuing improvement strategy for crisis management practices. However, senior leadership was only well-represented in three quarters of organizations, a worrying trend that indicates top management do not allocate enough priority to reflective practices.

Top priorities remain the same, however challenges persist

As with last year’s report, quick mobilisation of the crisis management team, effective external communications, and staff wellbeing are this year’s top priorities.

However, concerns over inadequate training, such as a lack of awareness of crisis plans and failure to share plans within the organization, indicates that siloes persist, and implementing management-level training shows most organizations still have work to do to have a best-in-class crisis management team.

Encouragingly, staff wellbeing is a rising priority with 87.0% of organizations considering it a key requirement of the crisis management team, but despite this, a quarter of organizations state that they do not change crisis team members enough, and 16.5% harbour concerns over the crisis management team’s risk of burnout.

A combination approach is growing within organizations, but the importance of regional autonomy is recognised

This year, more organizations than ever have expressed a preference for a crisis management structure that has some degree of centralisation (84.7%), highlighting a move towards more streamlined problem solving, as well as helping to break down the problematic siloes. However more organizations than ever before are using a hybrid approach to bring together centralised strategies with local teams given the autonomy to action parts of the crisis management plan themselves.

Another change from last year is the increasing number of senior executives recognising the importance of delegated control. 52.9% now assume an oversight role, highlighting a growing recognition that managers may need to make rapid decisions without waiting for senior approval.

A rise in the number of virtual crisis rooms and the increasing use of AI

Many organizations are moving away from physical crisis rooms in favour of virtual rooms that simplify efficiency, enable rapid response times, and allow global participation. Mirroring the rise of virtual crisis management tools is the increasing use of enterprise software, messaging apps, and virtual crisis room/dashboard technology. AI use is also rising, most notably for data analysis and support, real-time monitoring and alerts, and automated response protocols in a crisis management response.