Online Class: Crisis Management 101

Unexpected events occur frequently in all aspects of our daily environment. Whether on a school playground, a university campus, a factory, a post office or a major corporation headquarters, understanding the importance and challenges to individuals when addressing crisis management or emergency situations is vital for the safety and security of human life, revenues, and reputation.

This course on crisis management offers students the basics in identifying, preventing, and controlling crisis situations. Crisis management basics, from preparation to training and compliance are discussed, as are various stages of a crisis, and the need to establish a crisis management team. Clearly identifying the roles and functions of each crisis management team member is essential for the ultimate success of contingency planning, which is also discussed.

This course also helps students identify potential risks or situations that may precipitate a crisis or emergency and learn approaches on how to respond to such incidents. The importance of communication and making instant and effective decisions is also covered, as are a variety of emergency response scenarios; from planning evacuation from a local elementary school affected by an earthquake to a major hospital suffering a massive power outage to the threat of a rogue employee.

Crisis management also depends on developing, assessing and determining consequences of contingency plans, and helps students identify the most common weaknesses found in many crisis management plans. Finally, the course concludes with guidance regarding damage control, the restoration of confidence in a business, company or entity, and offers students a basic checklist that may be utilized as a jumping off point for a crisis management team in a variety of business environments or public sector scenarios.

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

Business Management

Management Essentials

Workplace Safety

Course Motivation

Understanding how to anticipate, plan for, and deal with a variety of potential crises, dangers, or catastrophic circumstances may not only save lives but also a company's reputation, thus saving billions of dollars in business or investment funds.

Crisis management, or at least a plan to deal with unexpected situations or emergencies, is required in most public facilities, from airports to schools. Crisis management is an important aspect of society today and provides a variety of challenges to managers regardless of the scenario. 

Why Crisis Management Is Important

Crisis management is a system of dealing with potential emergency situations or dangerous scenarios, regardless of the environment. We send our children to school knowing that they should be safe there. We go to work every day, assuming that our employers have provided a safe environment for us to do our jobs. We travel the freeways, believing that the structural integrity of roadways and bridges has been adequately designed with volume and congestion taken into consideration by architects and construction workers.

However, no matter how carefully or safely we plan our day, emergencies happen. We don't expect them, but we can plan for them. At school, we engage in fire and earthquake drills, but back in the 1950s and early '60s, drop-drills were practiced weekly in case of atomic catastrophes. Today, security is a big concern for many schools, and many school districts employ security officers as well as metal detectors to make sure that knives and guns are not brought onto school properties.

Because the safety and well being of our children are important, we expect school administrators, from preschools to college universities, to take appropriate caution when determining potential scenarios that may impact safety or harm life.

At work, we also practice fire drills and evacuation plans, and  we sometimes must pass through a variety of security measures before we reach our desk or place of employment.

Unfortunately, people in business today must also plan for the worst and do whatever is possible to protect not only lives but businesses from damage and destruction. From chief executive officers to employees, we must all be diligent in understanding why crisis management planning is important in everyday life. 

Challenges to Managers

Crisis management involves a variety of challenges to managers, school administrators, CEOs, and government employees. This course on crisis management will cover a variety of the basics regarding crisis planning that include but are not limited to identifying a potential crisis, detecting warning signs that a crisis may occur, and controlling the damage of any crisis situation.

Establishing a crisis management team will be explored later in this course, and involves choosing individuals capable of leadership and taking responsibility, as well as the ability to delegate functions and roles to other individuals.

The outcome of any crisis cannot be absolutely guaranteed. Situations differ, as do human emotions when reacting to specific crisis scenarios. A crisis can range widely from a CEO assessing damage from embezzlement, to handling a public relations disaster, to dealing with a university campus shooting.

Many crisis management teams feel that they have created adequate scenarios for their specific business environment but then fail to follow up by creating contingency plans, identifying weaknesses in a plan, and developing a variety of additional emergency response scenarios, expected or not.

The main focus of crisis management is to protect life and limb, limit damage, and restore confidence. Again, depending on environment, this is often easier said than done.

Scenario, environment, age of employees, schoolchildren, and adults all come into play in how a crisis or dangerous scenario may be anticipated, perceived, played out, and resolved.

What would happen if the CEO of an important company on the cutting edge of releasing a new technology was suddenly killed in a tragic accident? What happens to the employees and investors of that company? What happens to the stockholders who have invested in the technology?

How would school employees deal with evacuating damaged buildings following an earthquake or fire? How does your local post office protect itself from enraged employees who come looking for revenge with a weapon?

As you can see, emergencies are unexpected situations, and many emergencies are based on human factors and emotions. Hospitals may very well have a secure evacuation plan in the event of a fire, but what happens in the event of an earthquake? Or what if there's flooding caused by plumbing damage?

It can be said that Murphy's Law is alive and well in the 21st century: Bad things happen, and they often happen even to those who have done their best to protect themselves, their companies, their employees, or other individuals from danger.

Whether it's an oil spill in Alaska, faulty brake pedals in an automobile, bad public relations damage resulting from such faults, or financial misdealing from a leading investment company, crisis management is an essential part of contingency planning and preparation, as well as reducing losses from setbacks in today's business environments.