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Every organization needs a Crisis Action Plan. What to do, where to go and what happens next – regardless of the crisis, emergency or disaster which may occur. When building your Crisis Action Plan (or Emergency Action Plan), we recommend it be made as part of an overall set of emergency plans, which also include Crisis Communications and Continuity of Operations Plans.

Planning

We also recommend following a construct called POETE – Planning, Organizing, Equipping, Training and Exercising. First you need to get the buy-in of your leadership team to build and adopt/adhere to a Crisis Action Plan. This will undoubtedly involve Human Resources, Legal and other compliance oversight and approval. There are also U.S. Federal Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) requirements and federal laws related to workplace safety, which most organizations must adhere to – and they include the need for a written Crisis Action Plan (aka Emergency Action Plan) for organizations with 10 or more employees.

We have a free checklist of what needs to comes next. And if you want, you can use our Crisis Action Plan template for free, too. We offer this extensive plan template at no cost on purpose – we really want every organization to have a Crisis Action Plan for their staff and visitors to their site(s). Get our Crisis Action Plan Template by clicking on the “Free Download” button below:

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You can also find a free sample of a quick, concise two-page emergency action plan summary, from the U.S. state of Wisconsin’s capital complex here.

Organizing

  1. Your organization will need to build (and train) a Crisis Communications Team
  2. Same for an Emergency Response Team
  3. You will need to identify who is the main Point of Contact (POC) for your Information Technology Team
  4. And the same for any facilities/logistics teams – even if it is outside vendor (building maintenance, contractor)
  5. Alert System Name, if your organization uses one – and who activates/uses it.

Our Crisis Action Plan template above, covers all these teams and organizational constructs.

Equipping

The general workforce needs no equipment to participate in Crisis Action Plans, but they do need to know where to go (for example if evacuating to an emergency assembly area or sheltering-in-place in a safer room); and there is some training associated with tools which may be needed for a Lockdown. Emergency Action and Crisis Communications Teams both have equipment needs, and those will be identified in their own respective plan documents.

Training

We can build custom videos for you to introduce Crisis Action Plan training elements to your organization. Here’s a sample:

Once the Crisis Action Plan is approved and distributed, we recommend a stair-stepped approach to training both the general workforce members and the members of the Emergency Response and Crisis Communications Teams (as well as any other specialized teams established in your organization).

  • Start with an online pre-recorded introduction seminar. One they can view at their own pace and time schedule. If you have a learning management system which can document that they have completed viewing of this video, add it to that system, as you would ethics and computer safety training.
  • Your Emergency Action Team and Crisis Communications Team will need workshops for what they need to do, and then
  • Everyone can (and should) participate in Drills and Exercises.
  • Evaluate the training through exercises and other feedback methods (post-course evaluations, etc.) and revise the whole POETE process, as needed.

Exercising

Exercise Types

We mentioned two of the discussion-based exercises above (seminars and workshops). There are also tabletop exercises which can be done and then games (such as online quick microsimulations), drills and functional & full-scale exercises. Each of these types of exercises should be built upon the lower level first. We do not recommend jumping into a full-scale exercise with other groups, such as first responders, on any subject/hazard, until you and your own teams have practiced that same subject/hazard on your own via this stair-stepped approach. You should also evaluate the results of all exercises to see where the plans, organization, equipment and training needs to be revised and/or redone. Practice makes perfect, as they say. Barton Dunant has a ton of exercises for your team. Take a look at our catalog or let us know directly if you would like us to build or remotely facilitate an exercise for your organization.

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Building your Crisis Communications Team Plan

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Here’s one way to build your Organization’s Crisis Communications Team Plan (and also start your Crisis Communications Plan itself – to boot!):

  1. Get your organization’s management team to buy-in and support this concept first. There will be costs to developing and maintaining both the team and the communications messages themselves. Make sure to include risk management and legal council.
  2. Organize the preliminary members of your Crisis Communications Team – they will be your initial design team for the Crisis Communications Team Plan and also the Crisis Communications Plan. The first is a broader plan covering the “before, during and after” all types of incidents. The second is the specific messaging templates, checklists/steps, protocols, etc. used by the Crisis Communications Team during the actual Crisis Response for your Organization. You will find that the Crisis Communications Plan can somewhat build itself, especially when you have already designd the Team plan and worked through a number of exercises.
  3. Have your team run through our course Everyone Needs a Crisis Communications Team. You can have them do this individually or as a group – or both. Either way – figure out where you want the “practice” material to be stored (We have a Workshop repository – the comments section below! – where you can share your example work and see the work of other organization’s students). These workshop units have sections where the team members (and you) can develop sample communications templates, team organization charts, training lists, etc. – If you feel this information is proprietary and/or confidential, tell your team where to store these working examples. You may want to establish a cloud-based repository (like an MS-Teams Group, or Dropbox folder) where this “Real Life” information can be stored and shared only within your team. And here’s a tool which will help with both “real-world” crisis communications via social media posting (for both governmental organizations and non-governmental ones), as well as exercises, too.
  4. Build your Crisis Communications Team Plan through the course and also the subset Crisis Communications Plan. These could be annexes (add-ons) to a more general Emergency Action Plan (also called a Crisis Action Plan):
Both the Crisis Communications Plan and the Crisis Communications Team Plan are part of overall Emergency Management Planning for any Organization. Barton Dunant can help design, test and evaluate these plans for your Organization.

5. Exercise your Crisis Communications Team Plan, evaluate the exercise results and modify the plan accordingly. Then Exercise again (both repetitively to “fix” what was “broken” and in a more complex manner to find out what you might have missed). See our Blog on something called “the pink slice” – what you do not know you do not know. We have a few exercises that can help. See our Crisis Communications Team TTX – Winter Storm, Crisis Communications Team Table Top Exercise – Tornado, and Crisis Communications Team Table Top Exercise – Rats!! (A Fictitious Disaster) exercises.

Barton Dunant has both Discussion-based and Operations-based exercise templates, and also provides remote facilitation and evaluation of exercises on a consultant-fee basis.

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Crisis Communications Team Advanced Functional Exercise

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This is a Functional Exercise (FNX) designed to provide a stressful scenario that requires several key crisis communications outputs (talking points for executives, questions for emergency management officials for situational awareness and resource support needs, social media posts, press releases, etc.) – and in this exercise things will go from bad to worst very quickly.

The purpose of this exercise is to provide opportunities for your organization’s Crisis Communications Team to work together collaboratively and cooperatively evaluating and disseminating crisis action information pertaining to the incident – both in their roles to support continued organizational operations - and to serve the public during this exercise incident.

This two-hour exercise tests the capabilities and plans for crisis communicators which would be put into action if the organization’s prime office facility (i.e., main office building) was struck by a small aircraft. During the FNX, the simulated situation will worsen – in real time – as part of the exercise scenario.

This ExPlan can be purchased as a template on its own, or as part of a full (remote) facilitated exercise package.

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Exercise Template Store

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School Districts – please watch this short video to learn more about all-hazards emergency management, especially as it relates to the planning, organizing of staff, equipping, training, and exercising needed.

Fee-Based

Workshops

Fire

Crisis Communications Team

What is POETE?

IDEA = Belonging(TM)

Introduction to CPTED for Landscape Architects

FREE TTXs for MEMBERS!

Table-Tops

K12 School Series

START HERE: Before you start your first exercise, you need to plan our both the training and exercising collaboratively between school officials and the local public safety officials (police, fire, EMS/public health/hospitals, emergency management, etc.). This needs to be a whole community approach, since the incidents will be managed on a whole-community basis as well. Here’s the HSEEP template for conducting a workshop on building a multi-year plan, and here’s the template for the plan document itself. Both are courtesy of FEMA.

Here is a PDF copy of the slides and speaker notes, from our free sample table top exercise, conducted on March 22, 2024. The documentation (SitMan) for any district to use on their own, for a similar exercise is below:

school door imageThe ‘Before’, ‘During’, and ‘After’ of a School Shooting at a High School Basketball Game

Other free Table Top Exercises

COVID-19 Reception Center/Shelter Table Top Exercise

Fire Drill Table Top Exercise

Earthquake – Reception Center Table Top Exercise

Crisis Communications Team Table Top Exercise – Predicted Winter Storm

Crisis Communications Team Table Top Exercise – Tornado

Crisis Communications Team Table Top Exercise – Rats!! (A Fictitious Disaster)

Active Shooter Exercise Kit from CNA.org

CISA Tabletop Exercise Packages

Free and Fee-Based

Functionals

All Staff Fire Drill Functional Exercise

Emergency Response Team (ERT) Fire Drill Functional Exercise

Crisis Communications Team Advanced Functional Exercise

For our free templates and exercise documents, you do not need to enter any credit card info, but you will have to agree to our Terms and Conditions and provide your info (we do use for a newsletter to be e-mailed, but you can always opt-out of that anytime). We do NOT sell your information to any third-party services or providers.

Need more help?

We can also help remotely facilitate and evaluate any exercises your organization wants to conduct. Drop us a line, if you need help.

HSEEP Exercise stair-step flow from seminars to Full-scale exercises. increasing in complexity and expanded capabilities.
Barton Dunant encourages its clients to follow this stair-stepped approach to exercises, building on capabilities and complexity.
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