Emergency Action and Crisis Management Planning 

The importance of an effective workplace safety and health program cannot be overemphasized. There are many benefits from such a program, including increased productivity, improved employee morale, reduced absenteeism and illness, and reduced workers' compensation rates. Unfortunately, workplace accidents and illnesses still occur in spite of efforts to prevent them, and proper planning is necessary to effectively respond to emergencies. Clas Consulting can help you prepare your facility and your organization for an unforeseen event through the development of both emergency action and crisis management plans. 

Several Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards explicitly require employers to have emergency action plans for their workplaces. Emergency preparedness is a well-known concept in protecting workers' safety and health. 

To prepare for any contingency, an emergency action plan establishes procedures that prevent fatalities, injuries, and property damage. An emergency action plan is a workplace requirement when another applicable standard requires it. The following standards reference or require compliance with 1910.38: 29 CFR 1910.119, 1910.120, 1910.157, 1910.160, 1910.164, 1910.272, 1910.1047, 1910.1050, and 1910.1051. Requirements of an emergency action plan include identifying possible emergency scenarios based on the nature of the workplace and its surroundings; preparation of a written emergency action plan (for workplaces with greater than 10 employees); and training. 

Crisis Management:

Special measures taken to solve problems caused by a crisis. 

"To confine or minimize any damage to the organization's reputation or image," was another definition offered by executives when asked by Julia Gabis ¹. In her article, "Crisis: Danger or Opportunity," Gabis pointed out that good crisis management accomplishes even more. Good crisis management should do more than simply trying to minimize danger to an organization; it should also seek to maximize every possible opportunity. Good crisis management plans achieve both. Gabis used as examples the Tylenol incident and the Exxon-Alaska incident.

"A classic case of excellent crisis management is Johnson & Johnson's handling of the Tylenol poisoning incident a few years back. The situation was every corporate executive's worst nightmare come true; it could have put Tylenol (and perhaps Johnson & Johnson itself) out of business. Instead, the company not only retained consumer confidence, but today Tylenol has a larger share of the market than it did before the scare.
 
"On the other hand, an example of how NOT to manage a crisis is Exxon's mishandling of the oil spill in Alaska. It's a perfect case of a company doing everything wrong from not being prepared for a spill of such mammoth proportions to the media's portrayal of Exxon's chief executive, sitting passively in his New York home waiting by the telephone for reports of the situation."

A Crisis Management Plan (CMP) is a documented plan detailing the actions the executives want to be taken when a crisis strikes the organization. It is designed to put order into confusion. After a crisis has surfaced, the executives who have been selected to serve on the Crisis Management Team (CMT) will work together to achieve control of the crisis in order to minimize the impacts of the crisis.
 
1. Julia E. Gabis is an attorney specializing in health care law and crisis management with the Philadelphia law firm of Gollatz, Griffin, Ewing McCarthy