The interconnectivity of the world-wide marketplace can affect continuity of operations far from the incident site. Through a Business Impact Analysis, companies with multinational locations can identify potential vulnerabilities to situations and establish procedures to improve crisis management and business continuity efforts. A poorly managed situation can negatively affect a company’s reputation, business interests, and relationship with key regulators and partners.
Below are some crisis management situations that could affect business continuity for companies with multinational facilities. Crisis management and business continuity planning should be developed for each of these threat scenarios that could likely cause significant damage to the business.
- Employee issues: Labor relations, workplace discrimination or harassment, health and safety
- Environmental Stewardship: Disparity in environmental standards (international, country, state, county) Facility, Site, Field and Transportation, Spills, Fires, Well blowouts, and Gas Releases
- Natural Disasters: Earthquake, Hurricane, Tornado, Flood, Tsunami
- Marketing: Pricing, Supply, Recalls, Deceptive Practices
- Security Breach: Computer System Intrusion, Catastrophic IT Failure, Facility Security, Civil unrest, Personal Security
- Corporate Governance: Mergers, Proxy Fight, Organizational Restructuring, Workforce Downsizing Plant Closings, Management Succession, Integrity of Financial Reporting
- Financial Performance: Earnings Shortfall, Reinstatement of Earnings, Stock prices decline
- Industry/Sector Issues: Supply disruptions, Punitive regulations
- Illegal Activity: Extortion, Bribery, Fraud, Malfeasance, Criminal Investigation
- Political/Social issues: Human Rights, Diversity, War, Political unrest, Economic disparity, Discrimination
With rapid access to the crisis management training scenarios and tools needed to carry out operations, such as an Incident Management System or a web-based Business Continuity Plan, companies can resolve crisis situations in a timely manner and get back to “Business as Usual” with limited impact to reputation and the financial bottom line.