Crisis planning: Six ways to put people first

If your business is located in the southeastern U.S., you’re probably bracing for hurricane Matthew, which as of this writing is headed for Florida after making landfall in Cuba. All-too-familiar with the havoc a hurricane can wreak, you likely have a battle-tested plan for dealing with such storms and their aftermath.

But if your plan focuses primarily on the “physical plant, systems, tasks, and resources to get back to regular productivity,” you’re missing a crucial element says Bill Tibbo, author of the new book Leadership in the Eye of the Storm: Putting Your People First in a Crisis.

Tibbo argues that “the most important thing to understand about a crisis is that people are involved,” that “tragedy is measured in human terms,” and that “organizations that take the time to carefully and fully support each employee’s personal recovery are the most successful at getting their operations back on track.”

In the excerpt available for download here, Tibbo offers 6 techniques for creating a people-focused crisis response plan.