Crisis management & Resilience

Respond, prepare, emerge stronger

Together we emerge stronger from crises

Each crisis is different; has different impacts and can advance rapidly or build and unfold over time. Entity-specific crises can happen anywhere, anytime, and for any number of reasons – be it a corruption scandal that causes a corporate leader to step down, a data breach that shakes customer confidence, or quality issues that trigger a product recall. The COVID-19 pandemic is a good example of an unexpected global crisis, but it is not the only one. We are facing the European energy crisis, supply chain difficulties and lack of primary goods, also risk of extending war. On local level, we are also exposed to more frequent unexpected storms and blizzards (eg. Birgit), extreme heat waves etc.

Crises can have catastrophic consequences or they can reveal the strength, quality, and resilience of your organization. Yet every crisis is also an opportunity! We support our clients in preparing for the challenging situations when facing a crisis, and also understand that for organization leaders the impacts of a crisis can be felt months and even years after it has happened. When faced with a crisis, whatever its nature, you need to act immediately to minimise potential damages. The good news is that organisations that are well prepared and have identified their partners for times of crisis upfront, often emerge stronger than before from a crisis situation.

Confront a crisis head-on with good preparation and take advantage of opportunities

Are you prepared?

A crisis can happen at any time. As the global community has experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, an unplanned event has the potential to escalate into a massive worldwide disruption.

While the origin of the next crisis may be unknown, organisations that prepare properly can avoid repercussions that have the capacity to derail your business. A crisis can jeopardise your strategy, damage your employees and customers, disrupt normal operations, and induce long-lasting reputational harm. But if your organisation establishes effective crisis preparation, you can mitigate potential risks — and even emerge stronger.

Our team at PwC can help you to understand your potential risks, analyse your critical vulnerabilities, and set you up with a crisis management plan tailored to support your organisation in time of crisis.

Create opportunity from crisis

In the midst of a crisis recovery, the notion of discovering a business opportunity may be far from the top of mind.

But there’s no better time to solidify your strengths, root out your vulnerabilities and learn the lessons you need for an organisation stability strategy. You’ll be better positioned to respond to the next disruption, turn potential surprises into strategic opportunities — and gain greater success overall.

CER Directive

In January 2023, the European Union Critical Entities Resilience Directive, or the CER Directive, entered into force, whereas the deadline for transposition into national law is October 17, 2024.

Take a closer look at whether the directive can also apply to your organisation and what you need to do now to comply with the directive.

How PwC can help you with your crisis management

Crisis preparedness assessment
Business continuity assessment and assembling a business continuity plan
Crisis management program design and development of the crisis management plan
Crisis strategy and scenario planning
Stakeholder mapping
Crisis training
After Action Review

Crisis preparedness assessment

Before a crisis threatens your organisation, and even in the thick of an unplanned event, targeted initiatives can help assess your preparedness strengths and vulnerabilities – and improve your ability to respond and emerge stronger. A crisis preparedness assessment provides a detailed snapshot of your organisation’s current crisis-management capabilities; clear, measurable maturity score benchmarking; and a prioritised roadmap for enhancing your program.

Business continuity assessment and assembling a business continuity plan

Effective business continuity programs have a common framework, core capabilities, and coordination of resources and activities to plan for and respond to events while keeping up the key business processes and services.

PwC’s Organizational Preparedness Assessment (OPA), based on leading industry practices, helps organizations identify program blind spots and provides actionable recommendations to enhance program maturity.

Crisis management program design and development of the crisis management plan

Our Global Crisis Survey 2021 has shown that companies with a crisis plan are significantly better off after a disruptive event than their peers who are unprepared. An integrated crisis management program is essential for remaining confident when navigating a crisis. We help you set up an enterprise-wide program which generally includes program strategy and governance model, severity matrix and escalation triggers, crisis management team structures, roadmap and implementation schedule, and program maintenance plan. With our specialists collaborating across your organisation, you’ll develop a framework for your response – and a deeper understanding of crisis management to help you emerge stronger when disruptions strike. We help you create crisis plans, each tailored to your expectations, needs, operating environment and culture.

Crisis strategy and scenario planning

An outside perspective to poke holes in the right places can be a valuable asset. Our crisis strategy and scenario planning approach involves working with you to hypothesise potential outcomes, to draft approaches to mitigate their impacts, and to help you emerge confidently prepared to address any curveball that might come your way. The framework allows you to respond to immediate needs while looking ahead to mitigate possible strategy-derailing events.

Stakeholder mapping

In our 2021 Global Crisis Survey, fewer than 30% of respondents wholeheartedly agreed that relevant stakeholders had been engaged throughout the COVID-19 crisis and that the necessary information had been communicated in a timely manner. Stakeholder mapping and engagement provides a framework to identify your stakeholder population, assess their impact and influence, and create opportunities to engage with them before or during a crisis. The result is a forward-thinking, unified approach that can turn stakeholders into allies.

Crisis training

In high-stress situations, people tend to revert to their lowest confidence threshold – which means that no matter how good your crisis plan is, it can prove ineffective if your team isn’t comfortable with their roles and responsibilities. Organisations that emerge stronger from a crisis invest time and effort to prepare their teams. By helping each responder understand their role and create plans for each potential scenario, our approach results in a more cohesive, confident response.

After Action Review

Organisations that have experienced a crisis understand that no matter how they responded, there’s always room for improvement. Performing an After Action Review is a meaningful exercise – for your team and for your stakeholders, who will recognise your emphasis on continuous learning. The review yields insights that enable your team to identify and prioritise actionable enhancements. And depending on the nature of the crisis, ‘real-time’ or ‘in-flight’ reviews can also be beneficial, particularly if you’re dealing with a long-term situation that requires course-correction along the way.

Crises can have catastrophic consequences for companies – or they can reveal the strength, quality, and resilience of your organization. Every crisis is also an opportunity!