Companies often overlook the fact that they must first and foremost master one thing: the art of recognising dangers.
An effective contingency plan enables your organisation to respond to unexpected events with confidence and clarity. Key elements of a robust plan include
- Crisis response measures: Clear steps for dealing with specific emergencies.
- Communication procedures: Defined processes to ensure accurate, timely and consistent messages.
- Defined responsibilities: Explicit roles and responsibilities for crisis management staff.
Media and stakeholder guidance: Support for spokespeople to communicate effectively during a crisis.
What Makes a Good Contingency Plan?
An effective contingency plan enables your organisation to respond to unexpected events with confidence and clarity. Key elements of a robust plan include
- Crisis response measures: Clear steps for dealing with specific emergencies.
- Communication Procedure: Defined processes to ensure accurate, timely and consistent messages.
- Defined responsibilities: Explicit roles and responsibilities for crisis management staff.
- Media and stakeholder guidance: Support for spokespeople to communicate effectively during a crisis.
In addition, the plan should
- identify supplementary internal resources.
- Provide an overview of external support, such as emergency services and public sector resources, including key contact points.
The Critical Question: Is your plan ready to respond to a real crisis?
Understanding the Three Levels of Emergency Response
To evaluate your plan, consider the organization’s response structure across three levels:
1st Line – Frontline Response
- Are roles, responsibilities, and procedures clearly defined for personnel at the incident site or in direct contact with customers?
- Is there a clear protocol for managing people and resources on the ground?
2nd Line – Emergency Management
- Are the roles and responsibilities of the emergency management team well-defined?
- Are back-up resources identified?
- Are there established routines for notifying and sharing information with partners and authorities?
3rd Line – Strategic Oversight
- Is it clear when and how senior management, including the board and owners, should be involved?
- Are procedures in place for engaging partners and external authorities?
The Four Key Areas of Emergency Management
Effective emergency management typically revolves around four core areas:
- Preparedness: Ensuring readiness before an incident occurs.
- Response: Managing the immediate aftermath of a crisis.
- Recovery: Restoring normal operations and addressing long-term impacts.
- Mitigation: Implementing measures to prevent or reduce the risk of future crises.
By addressing these areas and aligning them with your organization’s response structure, your contingency plan can become a powerful tool for resilience and stability during challenging times.
Information Flow
Managing the flow of information is one of the biggest challenges in any crisis or unwanted incident. Ensuring accurate and timely communication between the four key areas of crisis management and the three organisational levels is critical. As part of your planning, consider the following questions:
- How will information be shared between different areas of responsibility?
- How will accurate information be provided to decision-makers?
- How will decisions be made and communicated effectively?
Your plan must prioritize prompt and accurate information for emergency management. It should also include mechanisms to distinguish between unverified and verified information, so that decisions are not based on rumour or error. To avoid overwhelming the leadership team with unnecessary details, establish clear guidelines for what information should be recorded, by whom, and for whom it is intended.
System Resilience
In a crisis, your internal IT systems may become partially or completely unavailable. Your contingency plan needs to address this scenario by defining alternative communication channels within emergency management, across the organization, and externally.
Decision Logging
Your emergency preparedness or disaster recovery plan must include guidelines for documenting decisions made by the crisis management team. A well-documented decision-making process ensures traceability and accountability. The principle is simple: “If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen.” Clearly define who documents decisions, how they are recorded, and where these records are stored.
The Four C’s of Emergency Management
To ensure effective emergency management, focus on these four key aspects:
- Command: Who is authorised to make decisions in specific situations?
- Control: How are implemented measures quality-checked and reviewed?
- Coordination: Who is responsible for managing employees and external partners?
- Communication: Who will be informed, what will be communicated, how and when?
Notification Procedures
Accurate and timely communication is critical during a crisis. Employees, affected individuals, the media, and the public need clear, practical information to understand the situation, assess risks, and make informed decisions. Early and transparent communication not only helps manage the crisis but also helps maintain trust and control over your organization’s reputation.
To ensure an effective notification process:
- Establish robust whistleblowing routines.
- Update tools and contact lists regularly.
- Ensure compliance with regulations such as DORA and NIS2, which require prompt reporting of cyber incidents.
Creating a simple flowchart can help map tasks, responsibilities, and the sequence of actions during each phase. This visualisation makes it easier to anticipate challenges, assign roles, and streamline the response process.
Planning should also account for long-term crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which require sustained resource allocation over weeks or months. Address practical needs like catering, shift changes, handovers, and wherever applicable, accommodation for employees.
It is not the crisis itself that damages the company and its reputation, but the unprofessional handling of it. Fast, compreheWorst-Case Scenario Planning
A strong contingency plan begins with a thorough Risk and Vulnerability Analysis (RVA). Regularly updating your RVA ensures it reflects the latest threats, including emerging risks such as cyberattacks.
Traditional RVA methods, rooted in security and HSE (Health, Safety, and Environment) principles, may need to be supplemented or replaced by more contemporary models, such as:
- Vessel Traffic Services (VTS): A modern approach grounded in criminology and security theory, particularly effective for analysing deliberate acts such as terrorism or cyberattacks.
Regardless of the methodology, your organisation must ensure thhat its risk analysis remains current, comprehensive, and aligned with the evolving risk landscape.
By taking these considerations into account, your contingency plan will be more resilient, actionable, and tailored to your organisation’s unique needs.
Contributed by F24 Experts
F24 is Europe’s leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider for resilience. More than 5,500 customers worldwide rely on F24’s digital solutions, which support companies and organisations through all areas of resilience. Solutions cover business messaging and service notification, emergency and mass notification, incident and crisis management, as well as governance, risk and compliance.
