Defining crisis management team competence In today's business environment, managers and executives are increasingly expected to take on some form of incident or crisis role, but are such non-specialists sequestered to crisis and incident management teams without any additional training or specific performance monitoring? Are yours there as a result of grade or position, or because they are the right person to aid the team? I have designed a web survey, to find out and to ask the UK business continuity management community to help me define crisis management team CMT) member competence. Crisis team members have limited opportunities to gain experience from real organisational crises and, therefore, there is a very real need to examine alternative means of identifying, developing and maintaining the core crisis management skills for CMT members. Individual skills or competencies can then be developed through simulations or exercises and appropriate training or development mechanisms put in place. Defining crisis management team member competence will allow any organisation to ensure that members of their crisis management team are indeed the ‘right people’ with the ‘right skills’. Like a road map, they allow the identification and recognition of the range of knowledge, skills and behaviours that are required as a crisis management team member. This in turn will enable companies to devise more effective selection, training and performance measurement measures. The PAS 56 consultation paper highlights the importance of CMT competence stating "the ability to achieve effective crisis management and business continuity during an incident requires strong leadership and coordination between the people responsible, individual site or building crisis management and business crisis management. A further critical aspect of an organisation's crisis capability is the competence of the crisis management team. Failure to put in place an effective and fit-for-purpose crisis management capability and team will expose an organisation's brand to unnecessary financial, credit, reputation, regulatory, legal, market and operational risk." Additionally, it recommends as an outcome of the business continuity management maintenance phase that organisations must "verify and validate that the organisation's crisis management competence and capability will enable the management or coordination of an incident at an operational, tactical or strategic (corporate) level". The starting point for proving competence starts with knowing and understanding the non-technical (personal) skills or competencies, which are necessary to be a crisis management team member. Technical skills will relate to the area the individual is representing i.e. HR, IT etc and are excluded from the scope of my survey. The majority of staff nowadays have a job profile which outlines their day to day job role, but this is not commonplace with crisis management team members. Competence profiling of crisis management team members will allow each member to know specifically what skills, knowledge and attitudes/behaviours are expected of them in a crisis environment. From an organisational perspective, identification of competencies portrays a clear message to regulators and other stakeholders, that they take crisis management seriously and can demonstrate their competency to an external audience. Much has already been written on crisis management team leadership but little on what makes an effective CMT member. The survey's focus is to hear from members not leaders of CMT's and gain a hierarchy of competencies, which will then be used for the basis of cognitive task analysis focus groups later in May. As a Group Business Continuity Manager, I have no demonstrable proof, at this time, that my crisis management teams are ‘competent’, apart from individual’s participation in annual exercises. Indeed, I have no way of charting competence or even more valuably, expertise development, and I am asking you to help me pull together a model as a starting point for discussion. A generic list in itself has severe limitations, but the list will then be debated by subject matter experts and a competence profile developed which will show exemplars of good and poor behaviours at a novice, proficient and expert level. Your contribution is what helps aid our expanding field. Have your say by completing the survey (available until 16th May) at: http://www.webpoll.org/competence/competencies_1.htm?id=827895680 The survey will take about 30 minutes to complete and is designed to study UK-based business continuity professionals only.
•Date: 28th April 2006 • Region: UK • Type: Article •Topic: Crisis management |
