Building Business Resilience: Risk, Issues & Crisis Management

Making Business Resilience Instinctive

We make Business Resilience instinctive.

From identifying and understanding your risks, to tackling your issues and managing crises, our unique approach combines communication, culture and process. Our end-to-end approach encompasses risk; business continuity; issues management; crisis preparedness, management and communication; and product recall.

And, to help you respond effectively to immediate threats, the Instinctif Partners Crisis Bureau offers 24/7/365 access to expert crisis management counsel and hands-on support.

We work in partnership with clients ranging from global corporations to SMEs, and trade associations to governments – equipping teams with the tools to perform at their best.

For an instant but comprehensive assessment of crisis and recall preparedness, the quickest and most effective solutions are CrisisOptic and RecallOptic. These new and exclusive diagnostic tools from Instinctif Partners allow any organisation to instantly benchmark crisis capability and recall readiness against international best practice.

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Our core services

24/7 live crisis strategy & response
Business continuity planning
Business resilience and crisis preparedness assessments
Crisis media training
Crisis simulations
Food safety culture
Issues monitoring & management
Policies and procedures development & embedding
Post crisis reviews
Risk management

24/7 live crisis strategy & response

Overview

The Instinctif Partners Crisis Bureau provides 24/7/365 access to expert crisis management counsel when you need it most. Our crisis response services include: strategic advice; communications and press office support; action planning and implementation; spokesperson coaching; live incident reviews; horizon scanning; and media and social media monitoring. Via our comprehensive network of partners, we also offer emergency call centre capacity, value-added technical services and legal advice.

Business continuity planning

Overview

We facilitate the process of business impact analysis, workaround planning and development of action checklists. Typically we achieve this via a combined workshop and spreadsheet methodology, always tailoring our approach to suit your needs. We bring to our business continuity offer a recognition of the importance of culture, and work hard to understand what approach will work best for your organisation.

Business resilience and crisis preparedness assessments

Overview

To obtain the most accurate picture of business resilience and crisis preparedness, we combine quantitative benchmarking (using CrisisOptic and RecallOptic) and qualitative assessment (e.g. interviews and desk research) to review policies, procedures, capabilities and culture in the areas of risk, issues and crisis management.

A gap analysis of the findings, informed by international best practice, identifies any vulnerabilities and proves the basis for our tailored recommendations. Often combining stakeholder interviews with desk research, we tailor the scope of the assessment to your business and can focus on specific risk areas such as social media management, cyber security or product recall.

Crisis media training

Overview

Our crisis media training ensures that your spokespeople are prepared to engage confidently with the media during intense pressure and scrutiny. It equips them with the knowledge and skills to take control of an interview and ensure that their key messages and body language make the right impression. Interview rehearsals, using stretching scenarios that reflect the highest risks in your businesses, provide an opportunity for spokespeople to practice and fine-tune their delivery. And, in addition to formal training workshops, our trainers are also on-hand to provide intensive coaching during live situations.

Crisis simulations

Overview

Our crisis simulations range from desktop walk-throughs – which build familiarity with procedures, roles and responsibilities – to multi-site, immersive and fully role-played exercises, testing all elements of your strategic, operational and communications response. Realistic crisis scenarios are introduced and escalated via injects delivered by our experienced role-players and exercise facilitators, involving third-party authorities as required. Utilising proprietary simulation software, we are also able to mimic the behaviour and interaction of social media, in a secure and closed environment.

Food safety culture

Overview

With human error being the root cause of many food safety issues, having a strong food safety culture is central to preventing product recalls and building a more resilient business. We help you inspire your people to do the right things, at the right time, because they want to. Our Food Safety Culture services include: food safety culture improvement plans; audits & risk assessments; root cause analysis; strategy workshops & development; food safety narrative & messaging; reshaping ways of working; influencer programmes to engage & inspire; ensuring food safety & quality during business transformation; workplace stress management; leadership & supervisor coaching for change; training toolkits & e-learning; recall simulations; internal & external incident reviews.

Issues monitoring & management

Overview

Our issues monitoring approach provides a proactive and consistent process for detecting, assessing and prioritising issues that pose a risk to your strategic, commercial or reputational interests. We then work with you to develop and implement issue resolution strategies. This may involve reviewing business strategy and operating processes, or entering into the debate to change perceptions and reshape the agenda. Where issue resolution is not possible, we work with you to create mitigation strategies and reduce risk exposure.

Policies and procedures development & embedding

Overview

With reference to international standards (such as British Standard BS11200:2014 for crisis management and ISO10393:2013 for product recall), as well as our own experience gained over decades of specialism in risk, issues and crisis consultancy, we work with you to develop best practice policies and procedures which are tailored to fit your requirements. Through coaching and training, we embed these policies and procedures amongst your teams – raising awareness, understanding and accountability.

Post crisis reviews

Overview

Through facilitated post crisis reviews, we impartially help you to review performance, identify good practice and learn lessons from a crisis to improve crisis management preparedness. We also help you to identify and understand the root-cause of the crisis and, where possible, make improvements to your business resilience to prevent anything similar happening in future. Finally, we can support you with your reputation recovery through strategic communications advice and execution.

Risk management

Overview

By taking a consistent and holistic approach to risk, we help you to identify issues before they become crises. The first step is helping you to develop a thorough and consistent framework for identifying and assessing risk. We then develop the most appropriate approach for bringing this to life across your organisation. This often includes facilitated cross-functional risk workshops to identify and assess the strategic, operational and reputational risks you may face. Finally, we develop a comprehensive risk register that records the risk assessment, ownership, mitigation strategies and timescales.

Our work

We think our work speaks for itself. Read the case studies below to find out more about how we help our clients to build business resilience. View more of our work here.