Scenario-based planning is a tool for further analysing and understanding the potential impacts of an identified threat or vulnerability to the business, and exploring options and approaches for minimising the potential likelihood, and the negative impact.

Scenario modelling can help to understand the level of planning and readiness required to manage the risk, and assist in raising awareness of the risk.

Scenario-based planning should be used for those ‘catastrophic risks’ assessed to have a major or significant consequence, of which we have limited understanding, irrespective of the likelihood. These are often risks that are too expensive to mitigate, or are a result of multiple risks escalating, compounding or converging in an unlikely way.

Catastrophic or extreme events usually require a significant or coordinated response capability across the organisation and with external parties. This is particularly important where the consequences of these risks may include intense political, media or community interest and/or the potential loss of confidence from key stakeholders.

Most organisations have considered the role of communications as part of the response effort. However, often the communications team has not clearly defined it’s structure and process to ensure it can operate effectively in coordination with other teams and as a team itself.

We work with both communications teams and individuals within crisis management teams to build their capability and confidence to craft communications strategy, create key messages and engage effectively with key stakeholders before, during and after crisis events.

Key recommendations for developing and implementing crisis communications capability are:

• Clearly defining roles and responsibilities for communications within all response teams
• Creating a suite of pre-populated communication templates to accelerate development and delivery of stakeholder communication during an event
• Ensuring any employee who may be called on to be a spokesperson in a crisis has undergone formal media training
• Schedule, develop and facilitate a desktop / hypothetical to review the crisis communications capability in a scenario-based environment
• Revise or amend any of the communications plans and concepts based on input and feedback from the scenario-based activity.

Crisis Management exercising is the process of applying the team and individual skills in an operating environment through scenario-based group activities. We use experiential-style training including hypotheticals, workshops, simulations and field exercises.

Scenario-based exercises allow us to highlight and refine the process for making decisions, gaining consensus and creating a plan of action.

In developing exercise programs, we follow a proven process which includes scoping, designing, facilitating and reporting. Our approach ensures there is a shared vision of the requirements and outcomes for the exercise including:

• the drivers for that particular exercise/event
• stakeholders to be involved
• elements to be tested
• elements to be trained
• tools, plans and facilities to be used.

A detailed post-event report is produced and presented to the relevant stakeholders to review how the team worked against the key objectives set.

Janellis have developed a suite of crisis management ‘integrated decision making’ and ‘business impact’ tools that can be customised and implemented across an organisation or industry.

Our experts then train and guide teams on using the tools, helping them be more effective in ‘cutting through’ the issues they face.

About our Response Tools

Our decision tools support teams in developing critical thinking, both individually and as a group. They also facilitate:

• Situational awareness – understanding of the facts and assumptions
• Ability to prioritise
• Understanding of impacts across the business
• Decision making
• Ability to develop tactical and strategic plans under the pressure of tight timelines.

To ensure organisations can respond to low probability but high consequence risks (catastrophic risks) requires a resilience framework that goes ‘beyond risk management’ which embeds both a strong culture of risk management as well as an adaptive culture and capability to respond.

An Organisational Resilience Framework builds upon existing risk practices to assist all areas of the business in developing an integrated and coordinated capability to anticipate, adapt and respond to a range of threats that may impact or disrupt business, people or assets.

Resilience Frameworks

Our International Organisational Resilience Framework is being used as a roadmap for organisations starting their resilience journey as well as an assurance tool for organisations that already have the capability.

Organisational Resilience brings together all elements of capability under one enterprise-wide framework. It allows organisations to visually and virtually connect all aspects of resilience including: Risk Management, Security, Incident and Emergency Management, Crisis Management, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.

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Resilience Reporting

Greater levels of assurance are being sought by key stakeholders that teams and organisations have the capability to respond and resilience reporting is being used to assess the capacity and capability for specific assets and across the enterprise.