By Greg Hazley
While most top executives and risk managers say their companies have crisis plans in place, only 29 percent feel very confident their firms would response effectively in a crisis situation.
Those figures were revealed in a survey of 50 C-suite executives, general counsel and risk managers by Levick Strategic Communications and law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, the latter which recently counseled BP’s Deepwater Horizon partner Moex Offshore.
Sixty-three percent of respondents said their companies do not conduct annual training drills or exercises, a high figure that Pillsbury partner and crisis chief Tom Campbell said could be contributing to the uncertainty and lack of confidence. He also pointed out that one-third of companies with a crisis plan could not recall the last time it was reviewed or revised.
The survey (PDF) also showed social media could be a cause for any of faith in crisis plans as well. Fifty-two percent said their companies’ crisis plans do not specifically address adverse content on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, while 21% said they did not know and 26% said their plans do address social media.
Richard Levick, CEO of LSC, said too many companies operate under the assumption that because crises are unpredictable, there is little that can be done to prepare. “But what companies can be sure of is that sooner or later, a crisis will indeed hit, and when it does, legal risks, business operations, and reputation management all have to be dealt with simultaneously and decisions often have to be made in a matter of hours, or in some cases, where human lives are at stake, a matter of minutes,” he said.
Although only a small percentage say they are very confident in crisis plans, the companies of those surveyed have been enmeshed in various crisis situations over the past three years. Forty-two percent said their firms were the subject of a government probe, while 24% said their companies have faced a natural disaster, data loss or security breach. Another 21% experienced at least one worker accident or death and nine percent felt the wrath of protesters or a consumer boycott.
Forty-two percent said a team of executives involving a mix of general counsel, VP of corporate comms., CTO, risk officer and COO has primary responsibility for reporting back to the CEO and board in a crisis.
Thirteen percent said that duty falls solely on the VP of communications.
The positive news from that data is that nearly 80 percent said their companies made changes – additional training and a crisis audit were the most cited tweaks -- to crisis protocol following such incidents. And while few are “very confident,” a majority of 56% said they are at least “somewhat confident” in their companies’ crisis plans.
Among several crises outlined in the survey, executives responding cited a data breach or security as the situation that would most negatively impact their businesses, followed by a natural disaster and power outage.
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