Emergency communications have been significantly influenced by the shift towards remote and hybrid working models, a trend accelerated by the pandemic and now firmly embedded in the culture of organisations. Users of crisis comms are increasingly rethinking and reshaping their plans to better align with the demands of dispersed teams; and hence growing reliance on cloud-based products. That’s among the findings of the BCI (Business Continuity Institute) latest crisis communications report.
A majority of those replying to the BCI survey stated that they had activated their plans between one and five times in the past year. The BCI commented: “This indicates that while crises may not seem very frequent, organisations are regularly prompted to put their communication plans into action.” Most respondents can activate their crisis communications plans within the hour. The most significant challenge that respondents experience during a crisis is gathering, validating, and sharing accurate information, the survey found. The spread of disinformation through social media and other digital platforms can be a complication, the report suggested.
The top trigger for a emergency communications plans in the last 12 months was, as according to previous reports, an extreme or adverse weather event; followed closely by a cyber or data security incident, or an IT or telecoms outage. Mobile phones and computers remain the main devices for managing emergencies, as old tools such as walkie-talkies, and satellite phones are gradually taking a back seat; and desk phones have suffered a sharp decline since the covid-19 pandemic.
As for activating crisis teams, email and enterprise messaging platforms, such as Teams, Slack, and Skype, have emerged as the preferred methods, while free messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal are also used. While overall activation times have remained stable, use of dedicated emergency communication tools consistently outperform those relying on manual methods. Email does leave a ‘paper trail’, but the report argues that ’emails should be complemented with other methods that can deliver more immediate communications’. Staff alerted to a crisis may suspect emails are spam, due to concerns about phishing. Meeting in person may not be the primary choice any more; video conferencing allows face to face communication, the report noted.
Notification tools
Many are using specialist emergency notification tools, which not only let a business inform a large number of employees, but reach key people that are part of a crisis management team. If a business is not using such tools, the main reason given is the absence of a defined budget. Or, some feel that Microsoft Teams meets needs; one UK respondent to the survey stated that Teams gave ‘screen sharing, participant tracking, and built-in transcription — providing a natural audit trail. In a crisis, these features become invaluable’. The report authors noted that where an app such as Microsoft Teams is critical to manage a crisis, ‘then it necessitates its own continuity measures, since it may be subject to outages’. The report points to last year, when a global outage by Microsoft affected services such as Outlook and Teams, ‘attributed to a flawed update in CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software, which led to system crashes across various sectors’.
The study found that common obstacles in the way of response to a crisis include (lack of) coordination, outdated or inaccurate contact information, and lack of engagement from staff. A mix of automated and manual systems are used to maintain up to date contact information for employees. The BCI found that increasingly organisations are doing regular training and crisis plan exercises, towards fostering a culture of readiness and resilience. Among reasons given by BCI members for dissatisfaction with their employer’s crisis communications was that they sought a more seamless way to trigger and manage alerts. Exercises, whether annual or semi-annual, are the favoured way of testing response, being ‘practical and relatively inexpensive’; also used are departmental drills, and simulations.
Visit https://www.thebci.org/.
Photo by Mark Rowe: street art, Belfast city centre.
