Spring is often the time when we think of Crisis Management Planning or Emergency Action Plans. Are we prepared for a flood? What do we do if we take a direct hit from a tornado? How do we survive an extreme drought? We face potential disasters each day, though – not just in the Spring. It could be a major water main break, a citywide power outage, or a horrible accident causing injury or death to an employee. Municipal leaders must be prepared and prepare for their employees and their communities to experience and deal with these types of crises on any day or at any time of the year.
Developing resilient communities requires leadership from government and business. Preparing the workforce, building safe facilities, investing in supplier relationships, and connecting to the community are all key pillars of creating community resilience from boardroom to storefront. The path to being a leader in reaching this goal involves connecting with the right people and resources and committing to action by helping the whole community (people, businesses, organizations) mitigate the hazards they face and bounce back quickly after an incident. Being prepared can also decrease the overall costs of disruption by disasters.
The Leadership Path
The most successful leaders act in a coordinated and collaborative way. They integrate a supportive environment that recognizes effective and actionable best practices and understand what makes public-private partnerships successful. This, in turn, enables state and local partnership development and growth. It also integrates planning, preparedness, and operational activities.
Connecting: The first step to becoming better prepared or becoming a leader in connecting within the community and local industry. As the connections to people and resources grow across sectors of the community, trust, aptitude for transparency, and efficiency in developing a preparedness program grow too.
Integrating: Planning, Training, and Drilling (exercises) are fundamental to community preparedness. Identifying challenges facing both government and private sectors through scenarios contributes to mutual understanding and community resilience.
Coordinating: Solving problems together in disruption, disasters, or crisis scenarios helps the whole community work through adverse situations. Businesses have a unique opportunity in identifying capabilities that can help during emergencies. The government has a responsibility to help businesses stay in business. As a result, customers and citizens benefit.
Collaborating: Talking issues through with all parties influences the way ahead through mitigation, recovery, and strategies that will enable resilience.
Committing: Your role is to be committed, which will make you grow in the community and encourage others to connect and act.
This leadership path gives businesses and municipalities of all sizes a road map to follow for building their own all-hazards preparedness and contributes to the resilience of the whole community.
Information Sharing
Decisions need to be made before, during, and after a disruption, regardless of the magnitude. For business there is either the normal or the not so normal; It doesn’t matter if it is a local, state, or federal declaration of emergency or disaster. Every day businesses and organizations of all sizes are constantly identifying problems, risks, and coping with crises.
Sharing information helps translate vagueness into clarity. Sharing is also based on a trusted relationship. Developing this trust within a municipal, community, or state emergency operations center and other information-sharing centers can enable government and business leaders to improve decision making.
Pillars of Business Preparedness
Whether you are a city/town mayor, a city manager/town administrator, or a business owner, there’s much you can do to help. Preparing employees, evaluating and mitigating risks or systems, and engaging the community will make your municipality more resilient.
Employee Training: Prepare your employees for the threats and hazards likely to impact your community. By preparing your staff for the threats and hazards likely to impact your municipality, you can ensure your people know how to stay safe in a disaster. Whether it is a fire, storm, earthquake, or shooter incident they will be prepared.
Structures and Systems: Taking deliberate actions to evaluate, mitigate, and reduce physical, cyber, and operational risks will help protect some of your largest investments: buildings, computer systems, equipment. etc.
Suppliers: Working with suppliers to share preparedness strategies, expect business continuity practice, and build confidence in your supply chain will calm concerns and provide peace of mind. Securing your supply chain, both locally and globally, is an essential component of improving your municipality’s likelihood to cope with disruptions and survive a disaster.
Service: Engage with community leaders, emergency managers, planners, and your elected officials to support pre-incident preparedness planning. In addition to preparing your municipality, it is important to understand your local tribal and state emergency plans and capabilities. Focusing on these pillars builds capacity and can yield a competitive advantage benefiting local businesses and citizens.
To learn more about Crisis Management and Preparedness go to www.ready.gov. There is a multitude of resources to help you develop these programs.
