The Least Favorite Business Plan
Planning for an unexpected, unpleasant event
Extreme weather is something that you may have time to respond to, but there are other urgent situations that can arise unexpectedly!
In the course of establishing a business, there are various business plans that are often generated. A sales plan, an operations plan, a financial management plan, a recruitment plan and even a customer engagement plan. There is another plan that should be considered though, and it is one that is not very pleasant to imagine having to implement. That plan is the "Disaster/Catastrophic Event Plan” or maybe less ominous, “The Urgent Response Plan.” This is a plan that should be considered in the spirit of ensuring the safe environment for all the associates, guests to your business including vendors and suppliers and of course, customers.
This plan, regularly labeled as a “disaster plan,” could also include lower grade conflict resolution actions, but at its core, the key elements for responding to potentially disastrous upheavals, either with or without warning, should be enumerated and reviewed regularly. All associates should be required to review, sign off on having reviewed and periodically drilled on the necessary response to any of the potential events that would fall under this plan's purview.
It is not pleasant to think about many of the potential events that necessitate such a plan's inception. They speak to events of natural origin or resultant from human interactions of a disruptive or even violent nature. And much like business insurance, one hopes it is there for peace of mind only, but the reality as we've seen over the last decade or so, is that there is always a potential for any business to be confronted with such an upheaval.
Possible scenarios that should be considered include:
A visitor to the business, interacts hostilely toward another visitor. The interaction escalates to violent behavior being threatened or actually occurring
Do you have a strategy for quick response to reduce the potential of a physical altercation? Have your employees been trained for conflict resolution, or conflict de-escalation?
A visitor interacts hostilely toward an employee of the business. This might include harassment (sexual or otherwise), threats of physical violence or actual physical altercation.
Training in conflict resolution and conflict de-escalation as well as risk abatement techniques should be provided.
A disgruntled employee interacts hostilely with a co-worker, supervisor, HR team; range of behavior from abusive language to threats of violence to actual physical interaction.
Do you have a zero tolerance policy regarding harassment/abusive behavior/violence in your workplace? Who enforces that policy?
Following a termination, an employee makes threats or behaves in a threatening manner. There are concerns the employee will return to exact retribution.
A termination protocol should be spelled out in management guides
The scenarios above are of the lesser extreme as far as seriously catastrophic events that can occur, but they can be disruptive, erode morale and create longer lasting effects to the overall team psyche. Handling these professionally, effectively and proactively, can go a long way toward instilling confidence in the leadership. Perhaps as important to the process, is the debriefing actions following such an event; circling back to the teams to ensure everyone is aware of what occurred (even if provided a description that is discreet with respect to protecting privacy of those involved) and offering any additional emotional, psychological support is important.
Below are events of significantly greater magnitude, some including potential "bad actors," while some are natural occurrences that we may have no control over the outcome, but should be prepared to respond regardless.
The weather service has warned of an impending storm arriving within 24 hours. The potential for road closures, severe flooding, heavy snowfall/ice, hurricane/gale force winds, are forecast.
A timeline should be developed early on to allow leadership a chance to review options, and provide updates as to planned business closure, operational shut downs, early closing (to allow on site employees the opportunity to seek safe shelter at home before the conditions deteriorate to unsafe travel/commuting parameters).
Weather related: What appeared to be a day of thunderstorm activity has rapidly progressed into a Tornado Watch, soon to be upgraded to a Tornado Warning.
A safe space within the facility needs to be designated in the Disaster Plan.
Without warning an earthquake creates havoc and confusion.
The issues above were related to natural events, that can occur with little or no warning; the scenarios below are related to the unfortunate occurrences caused by human actions:
Disgruntled employee/visitor arrives brandishing a weapon
Active Shooter/Widespread Violence/Terrorist Event (although these may have some difference in scope, the severity of the potential outcome groups these together)
The development of an "Urgent Response Plan" is one that should be given serious consideration. Hopefully, such a plan can be developed, disseminated, even subjected to tests and drills, but never actually will need to be implemented. Unfortunately, the possible scenarios mentioned, whether natural events or man-made events, are being recorded daily in various parts of the world, many closer to home, a fact that most would be uncomfortable to admit. The thread of commonality in all these events, is that as unexpected as they may be, with a well planned, formatted and deployed Urgent Response, the outcome may be a much more positive one, than what often happens when panic and confusion and lack of focus dominate an unexpected, and potentially catastrophic situation.
