Navigating through Crisis

Navigating through crisis: a checklist

If your business is currently operating, you may have already taken some steps to protect your employees and your business.

To ensure further preparation, have you:

• Provided appropriate equipment, a proper work environment and adequate mental support to prevent infection at work and to ensure the well-being of your employees?
• Prioritized operations by considering your business goals within the current constraints of the pandemic in order to maximize return while minimising risks.
• Identified various credible scenarios, developed alternate plans for each of these scenarios (including the plan for a staged shutdown/ramp-up) and reviewed them regularly.
• Reviewed/renegotiated contracts with strategic partners to anticipate disruptions and generate contingency plans.
• Identified meaningful indicators that will allow you to respond swiftly in the event of a scenario change.
• Continued to conduct risk assessments and ensured that critical processes and safeguards are adequately managed and resourced, in spite of the production capacity that may have changed.
• Identified critical business processes and the appropriate multidisciplinary resource loading to support your operations (including contingencies to address potential absenteeism) and ensured that competencies for resources are adequate.
• Defined and executed a structured communication plan for all relevant stakeholders (employees, customers, shareholders, unions, etc.).
• If your operating capacity is currently reduced, are you utilizing your available resources to complete improvement opportunities that have been identified and prioritized, and to prepare for a full restart?

If your business is preparing for a restart, there are critical safety, operational and communication measures that you must address.

To ensure further preparation, have you:

• Considered your customers’ needs, their behaviour and demand patterns, and validated the alignment of your operational objectives with this information.
• Understood and met the current legal/regulatory requirements? Engaged your workforce and put together a cross-departmental plan for a safe return to work?
• Prepared appropriate equipment, a proper work environment and adequate mental support to prevent infection at work and to ensure the well-being of your employees?
• Developed a list of prioritised critical workstreams and restart activities (integrated plan).
• Anticipated a number of scenarios that consider internal and external dynamics, and put in place alternate plans?
• Identified meaningful indicators that will allow you to respond swiftly in the event of a scenario change.
• Developed an adequate restart budget and resourcing plan that includes training and backup.
• Assessed the readiness of your suppliers, logistical providers and customers for a restart.
• Prepared a rigorous operational prestart-up review checklist and planned to complete it prior to restarting with sufficient time to address deficiencies.
• Communicated your plan to your stakeholders, including your workforce and customers?

If you have restarted your operations, you are now adjusting to post-pandemic reality.

To ensure further preparation, have you:

• Identified learnings from the pandemic and applied them to your operations.
• Acknowledged new operational constraints that may be brought about by the pandemic and their impacts on your supply chain and critical internal processes?
• Considered changing industry structures, consumer behaviours and market positions, and optimized your supply chain and critical internal processes to thrive in the post-pandemic operations?
• Built-in redundancy, modularity and diversity in your value chain to ensure resilience?
• Applied rigorous management of change principles to ensure that risks associated with subtle and deliberate changes are assessed and managed by way of controls that are adequate and appropriate for post-pandemic operations.
• Reassessed your overall risk profile and existing controls to ensure their effectiveness.
• Developed/reviewed/revised your business continuity plan to ensure its adequacy for post-pandemic operations.
• Prepared your organization for credible disruptions through adequate tests, exercises and drills?
• Engaged and educated your workforce to be vigilant and aware of risks?