[Excerpt] It’s no longer a matter of WHETHER a crisis will happen or not, it’s a matter of WHAT TYPE it is and WHEN it occurs. An organization (and its union) that can manage and recover from a crisis demonstrates competence – the results can mean survival, growth, and profitability , which also means preserving and growing jobs while building reputations and trust

Brown, Nellie J

English

[Excerpt] It’s no longer a matter of WHETHER a crisis will happen or not, it’s a matter of WHAT TYPE it is and WHEN it occurs. An organization (and its union) that can manage and recover from a crisis demonstrates competence – the results can mean survival, growth, and profitability , which also means preserving and growing jobs while building reputations and trust.Brown41_Crisis_Management_article_as_pamphlet_01142019.pdf: 728 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Brown, Nellie J.

eCommons (Cornell Univ.)

Crisis Management

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Cornell University ILR School 
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Manuals and User Guides ILR Collection 
1-14-2019 
Crisis Management 
Nellie J. Brown 
Cornell University ILR School, njb7@cornell.edu 
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Crisis Management 
Abstract 
[Excerpt] It’s no longer a matter of WHETHER a crisis will happen or not, it’s a matter of WHAT TYPE it is 
and WHEN it occurs. An organization (and its union) that can manage and recover from a crisis 
demonstrates competence – the results can mean survival, growth, and profitability , which also means 
preserving and growing jobs while building reputations and trust. 
Keywords 
crisis management, planning, effective communication 
Comments 
Required Publisher Statement 
© Cornell University. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. 
Recommended Citation 
Brown, N. J. (2019). Crisis management [Electronic version]. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Workplace 
Health and Safety Program. 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/manuals/19 
 1 
CRISIS MANAGEMENT 
Nellie J. Brown, MS, CIH 
01/14/2019 
Pamphlet for COEM-WNY 
 
It’s no longer a matter of WHETHER a crisis will happen or not, it’s a matter of WHAT TYPE it is 
and WHEN it occurs. An organization (and its union) that can manage and recover from a crisis 
demonstrates competence – the results can mean survival, growth, and profitability , which 
also means preserving and growing jobs while building reputations and trust. 
  
What makes a ‘crisis’?   
This is a situation where an organization either (a) doesn’t have sufficient or accurate 
information to make decisions or (b) lacks the resources to control the situation – and the 
situation unfolds with an escalating flow of events that needs to be managed.  During a crisis, 
the organization has to manage the problem while under intense scrutiny from outsiders, the 
media, and its own workforce. Where a workforce is organized, the union also experiences the 
crisis -- not just from the situation itself, but also from its members’ perceptions of how the 
union is responding. A crisis can lead to a siege mentality where both management and labor 
may feel under attack from all sides.  How well the crisis is managed may determine the long-
term survival of the organization (and thus jobs) as well as the survival of the union or its 
current leadership.  
 
Crisis management attempts to identify an organization’s vulnerabilities to a wide range of 
problems in order to prevent crises from occurring. Not all crises can be avoided, but they can 
be managed through planning and effective communication.  There are so many excuses 
(oops! “reasons”) organizations don’t do planning, considering it a waste of time until a 
problem actually occurs, then they will try to think on their feet. Unfortunately, in real life, 
when the problem hits, we can’t depend on people becoming creative problem-solvers when 
under intense pressure or scrutiny. A good business case can be made here: crisis-prepared 
organizations tend to stay in business longer and be more profitable or fiscally-stable.  
 
Yes, it is tough to think about the unthinkable. We don’t want to imagine that things could go 
terribly wrong. But, if we want to be better prepared, we start by forming a team: if a 
workplace is organized, that team can be joint labor/management. However, within the union, 
having its own team can help it to address its own internal issues of preparedness and 
communication. The team develops a crisis plan by analyzing and evaluating the organization’s 
vulnerability to crises and then developing crisis response strategies and interventions.  A 
diverse team is critical in order to better identify possible threats – what might be perceived as 
a crisis from some members’ points of view, may be considered routine and manageable by 
other members. Team members may include: upper levels of management and the union, 
human resources, the employee assistance program, security, health and safety, financial and 
legal departments, operations (including various worksites), maintenance, public relations, and 
(highly recommended) at least one front-line employee.   
 
 2 
The team begins its work by conducting a crisis audit to determine vulnerabilities as seen by all 
functions within the organization. The team considers possible vulnerabilities and any natural- 
or human-caused crises the organization could face, as well as crises that have happened to 
organizations similar to their own. The team evaluates the extent of damage these crises could 
cause and the effects they would have on employees, the organization, and its 
customers/clients. Next, the team examines the preparedness of the organization to manage 
these crises. They should even consider what would happen if more than one of these crises 
occurred at the same time or simultaneously with a natural disaster. (After all, maybe you could 
manage an equipment failure crisis very well – if only your replacement equipment and 
technical support could arrive despite the on-going blizzard.) 
 
Of course, your team will probably uncover several situations that could become major 
problems, so how do you prioritize where to put your efforts? It helps if you review your 
assessment to identify the most-likely or most-damaging crises that could occur in the 
workplace and especially look for those that the organization is not prepared to manage. 
Organizations need to anticipate problems of all sorts; some examples could be: major 
equipment failures, serious legal trouble, lost intellectual property, a damaged reputation, or 
an outbreak of illness in the workplace. 
 
Next, the team reviews current policies/procedures for managing crises, and the union can look 
at its responses accordingly. For each crisis, the team develops a plan to respond to the 
problem and manage it. These plans will become the crisis response manual so everyone knows 
their responsibilities during a crisis.  Even when plans are skeletal or the crisis unfolds in a 
different way than you imagined, a basic plan means that you don’t have to invent everything 
from scratch in the middle of a crisis.  
 
It would be very helpful to be able to head off a crisis – that would mean being able to 
recognize early on that one is developing so that you can respond quickly enough to make a 
potential crisis into a non-event. You want bad news to travel upward in the organization so 
that you can deal with the crisis at its earliest stages. You may want to consider 
recognizing/rewarding people for alerting the organization to possible hazards. 
 
As you develop a crisis management plan, try to identify all the stakeholders –any persons or 
entities who have an interest in the situation’s outcome. See how the crisis might look to them 
– then you can figure out how you will need to interact with them, what resources they might 
have available in a crunch, or how you can best communicate with them. Clearly, employees 
and their union are critical stakeholders: how does management communicate a crisis with the 
employees/union and the union, in turn, with its members? 
 
As you prepare your plan, include guidelines for identifying how the plan will be triggered, as 
well as for monitoring or evaluating the situation.  
 
Good communication is critical: sometimes an organization handled the crisis well, but 
communication about the crisis led to the perception by employees or the public that the crisis 
 3 
was badly managed. The crisis plan lists staff, their crisis responsibilities, and the organization’s 
key stakeholders (including the media and the public), indicating how communication will be 
handled with them. All personnel must know their individual responsibilities and to whom or 
where to report. The crisis manual addresses who will communicate about the crisis. (The 
rumor mill can be creative, but not necessarily accurate.) 
 
To ensure recovery after a crisis, it is essential for the organization to focus on the most basic 
functions of the organization, not necessarily everything you had before the crisis happened. 
Especially imagine what will be the needs of people – so that you can make sure that they are 
getting the support they need as they do the recovery work.  
 
Of course, even with the best of advance planning, things can still go wrong. It is so vital for an 
organization to take care of its people so that critical incident stress does not become post-
traumatic stress disorder. When employees are given an opportunity to understand the effects 
of critical incident stress and the value of acknowledging their emotions, they recover faster, 
stay healthier, remain more productive on the job, and experience less disruption in their home 
lives. Some people find it helpful to attend a critical incident stress debriefing in which they may 
discuss their experiences and feelings, gain a sense of perspective, and de-stress. For those who 
consider this insufficient or uncomfortable, follow-up counseling and individual sessions should 
be made available. Organizations need to encourage the use of these resources to promote 
health and recovery. In a unionized setting, employees may seek their union’s member 
assistance program instead.  
 
The information in this fact sheet was originally developed for The Center for Occupational & 
Environmental Medicine at the Erie County Medical Center (ECMC), 462 Grider St., Buffalo, NY 
14215. The fact sheet is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 
International (CC BY-ND 4.0) licence.   
 
 
 


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