Crisis Management and Business Continuity - ONLINE Course

Crisis Management and Business Continuity 

Fee: £399 + VAT // Approx. $450 USD // 2000 AED

Award: Certificate of Achievement for all attendees who study the video presentations. For those pursuing a Level 5 Award (30 credits equivalent), two formal assessments are required to be submitted.

Format: Online and self-paced with 8 hours of video tutorials, access to written content including case studies and inquests, and e-library. Tutor support and access provided.  Course Overview: Mishandling a crisis, incident response, or failing to prepare for an emergency, can permanently shut-down or bankrupt an organisation and/or lead to serious and highly-visible sanctions against company leaders.

Many organisational crises in business and public sector institutions begin with a series of small trigger incidents, which – taken together – can come to overwhelm an organization, sector, or nation, before senior-decision-makers are able to organise a response that can mitigate hazards and threats.

Taking into recent lessons identified from the Manchester Arena Attacks inquest, as well as other key business security events of recent times (including Covid-19), this highly-practical course - delivered by an experienced security and media practitioner - prepares company managers and leaders to accurately anticipate, plan for, respond and recover from crisis scenarios.

The course demonstrates how to organize, structure, and respond as a unified team to a crisis. The programme content includes the designing, building, implementing and reviewing of Business Continuity Plans; Incident Response planning, execution and monitoring; Crisis Recovery Strategies of major organisations, and also provides delegates with opportunities to test themselves against hostile media questioning and acute Public Relations challenges.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Understand dominant theories and practices of business resilience and the legal frameworks that apply to ‘organisational resilience’
2. Critically evaluate crisis leadership case studies within the context of emergency planning, incident response and crisis recovery
3. Explain how we can ‘teach’ and ‘learn’ crisis leadership’ and ‘business resilience’, including necessary planning, educational and preparation frameworks
4. Evaluate and explore practical exercises, comms red teaming and rehearsals, including mock media interviews and Executive Board presentations that relate to and reflect upon the three principal stages of Crisis Management (pre-crisis, crisis response and crisis recovery)
5. Understand and implement the key Risk Management, Crisis Management and Business Continuity Management international standards, including 22361: 2022, 31000, 22301 and 27001

Course Programme:

Laws and Regulations: National and International legal context and implications. Corporate Negligence. Health and Safety at Work legislation. GDPR and Data Protection legislation.

Theories of Crisis Management: Differences between ‘crisis’ and ‘normal’ business environment turbulence. Case study-based exercise, including video and critical review of poor disaster management

Case studies in poor and effective Crisis Management and Leadership: Various sector examples of crisis mishandling that exacerbated company losses and public disenchantment. More positive case studies set against a criteria of image repair strategies.

Business Continuity Management: Concept and Case Studies: What is BCM? Business Continuity and other expert guidance, applied into practice. Case study-based exercise, including video and team exercises that practice Business Continuity Plans. How could strategy and BCM plans help reduce negative business impacts? What should be in your plan? People, Processes and Assets.

ISO Standards: ISO 22361:2022 Security and Resilience: Crisis Management standard. Concepts & principles of BCM in line with best standards & practices (including the ISO 22301 Standard). Implementation of BCM including 22301 and 31000. The Governance structure, roles & responsibilities of stakeholders in BCM framework

Personal leadership. Techniques and disciplines used by high-achieving individuals. Confidence building techniques. The ‘Leadership Challenge’: The 10 best attributes of corporate leadership (Kouzes and Posner). Exercise based upon designing your own Leadership Personal Development Plan

Crisis Communications Planning: The structure of a plan. How to plan and rehearse.
The art of organizational communications. What are ‘crisis communications’? High-visibility communications leadership traits and techniques. The role of media and digital media in shaping perceptions of crisis. Exercise: Designing hostile media interviews and the power of rebuttal. Interview with national journalist: ‘What makes a good crisis media response?’

Feel and approach. Being comfortable with Crisis. Practice and rehearsal. Bringing it all together. Conducting a hostile TV interviews after a crisis. Exercise: Conduct a television interview relevant to your team’s sector.

Why attend?
• Organisations and companies that exhibit weak leadership during a potential or actual crisis can lose many/all customers, stakeholders and key employees
• Poor crisis leaders nowadays tend to lose their jobs and clients. Provide client confidence in your and your organisation’s assurance, continuity and ability to ‘serve to lead’ in your sector
• To develop your own ‘Crisis Leadership Personal Development Plan’, Incident Response Plan and Crisis Communications Plan
• To provide reassurance and commitment to your employees and key stakeholders
• To receive practical experience in dealing with challenging media engagement and hostile interviews

Who should attend?
Senior Management Teams, CEOs, Chief Operating Officers, HR Managers and Directors, Chief Security Officers, IT Directors, Branch Managers, Aspiring Directors and Managers. Military and Police (closed sessions upon request).

About the tutor:
Richard served as a media relations and Cabinet Minister visits coordinator, in the UK government’s media and events units’ during Prime Minister Tony Blair’s second and third-term administrations (2003-06), experiencing and leading first-hand on crisis communications and situational planning related to national security, policy and resignations/reshuffles. During his career, Richard has guest lectured regularly and contributed to industry guidance at preeminent UK security agencies, including the National Counter-Terrorism Security Office (NACTSO), the UK Defence Academy, as well as the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO). He worked as a Close Protection Operative (CPO) for US and UK-based organisations at many global mega-events, including the London 2012 Olympics and Russia’s 2014 Winter Olympics. He served as Senior Lecturer (Security and Resilience) tutoring UK Armed Forces and then Business School Director at Buckinghamshire New University before becoming serving as Managing Director and Leader respectively of two large UK-based organisations. To date he has published three books on security management, arms trading and terrorism, with his fourth book – Cyber Terrorism – due for release in 2024. Richard is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is an experienced corporate media trainer, broadcaster and writer, including recently for the Sunday Express and London Evening Standard’s award-winning Tech podcast. 

Teaching and Learning Approach: University teaching qualified and experienced leader/practitioner in Crisis Leadership, Incident Response, Communications Leadership and Business Continuity Management. The tutor will use case studies, interactive exercises, and cohort discussions throughout this course programme. All attendees will receive access to the online learning platform with a course library, academic support guidance, assignment briefs and a cohort discussion board.

 Quotes from prior learners:

"Excellent, Really practical and delivered by somebody who has been there and done it."

"Really realistic work-life assessments and great support from our tutor."