What is Critical Event Management?

Critical events, like severe weather, significant security events or significant supply chain disruptions, are unavoidable within a business. Still, organisations can work towards reducing the impacts of critical events through preparation. Without suitable preparation, the cost of resolving critical events will be considerably more, and businesses will take longer to recover, maybe resulting in lost productivity, damaged reputation, supply chain instability, lower revenue and lower staff retention.

Critical Event management is the practice of establishing measures to ensure incidents are resolved quickly and effectively. It is closely linked to all emergency planning and influenced by existing response protocols across corporate entities. The key is understanding entire organisations’ critical functions and how they would be impacted, the potential damage. This enables the identification and implementation of procedures to minimise vulnerabilities and safeguard critical operations.

A large part of incident management is aligning resources. If a critical event impacts a single department, the response could potentially require company-wide action. Ensuring stakeholders are kept informed, Critical Event Management improves communication and inter-departmental coordination, establishing key stakeholders and priority actions. Post-incident and analysis aids the management of vulnerabilities and highlights both successes and failure’s, which can influence business continuity practices.

Technology solutions and platforms allow organisations to manage critical events with greater visibility and utilise an automated procedure. Instant communication ensures staff, stakeholders and emergency contacts stay up-to-date and informed. In the event of an incident, alerts can be raised – instigating escalation processes – streamlining incident response and improving response times. Data is stored securely in one place, recording key metrics and statistics that can provide valuable insight into operations. Employees can utilise reporting features to manage day-to-day incidents and allow better situational awareness into routine operations: improving resilience and your organisation’s ability to keep its employees safe.