- In a complex incident or product recall,
the focus tends to be on the technical side of risk.
For product-related incident,
that focus is often
in the health and safety risk.
While this is clearly important.
In order to prevent a crisis,
you need to broaden that perspective.
You see, crisis management is all about
your customer or consumer.
Maintaining and even enhancing their trust is critical,
because without it, you won't have a business.
Hi, my name is Steve Hather,
Director of The Recall Institute,
and welcome to a very wet Sydney,
so sorry for the rain noise in the background.
This week, week five of our series on
what an effective product recall
and crisis management program should include,
I'm looking at assessing risk.
On our 10 Key Elements of Effective Crisis Prevention,
we're here at number five.
In last week's video I talked about
the need for your team to have good guidance
in the form of a checklist
and to ask the right questions.
Without that structure,
you end up in a fog,
and the next thing you know,
you're in a crisis.
So what are those questions?
Unfortunately most product recall
and crisis management plans
simply ask the question
"is there a health and safety risk"?
And when the answer is black and white,
it might make your decision making easier.
Unfortunately however
few incidents are black and white.
Firstly on the health and safety side,
there are a bunch of different methodologies
such as RAPEX, ISO 31000 Guide 51,
and of course the assessment methodology contained
in the International Standard for Product Recall
that you can use.
Now personally I use
a plain English version that guides
the senior management team through a set of questions
and is based on a mix of those methodologies.
The key point I wanna make however is that
you need to think beyond health and safety risk,
and look also at those factors that will impact
your reputation and ongoing relationships
with customers and consumers.
I refer to this as incident analysis,
and that is made up of a few different parts.
Firstly stakeholder analysis
involves identifying key stakeholders,
their concerns and expectations,
and the consequences that the incident has for them.
You probably won't be able
to meet all their expectations,
but if you understand them,
you have a much better chance of addressing them.
Secondly a review of what's going on in the market
will help you identify factors that cause
an otherwise minor incident to escalate
faster and broader than you expected.
Those of you that have seen my training courses
will know that the cause
of the Coca-Cola Belgium crisis in 1999,
which at that time was the largest recall in history,
was a failure to understand and respond
to market conditions in Europe.
And lastly impact analysis on the potential impact
that the incident will have on your business
on a range of factors such as reputation
and relationships and business continuity
will broaden your thinking about the incident.
Incident analysis does not have to be
a lengthy or complex process.
In fact I've got this down
to about six or seven questions.
But when you have a set of questions like this,
it will set your team up
with the right perspective early in the incident.
Preventing an incident or recall escalating into a crisis
is not just about fixing the problem with your product.
Crisis management is ultimately about
your customer or consumer.
Embed that thinking into your assessment
and it will prevent the incident or recall
escalating into a crisis.
Next week, week six,
we'll look at response strategy
and the reasons that standard corporate PR fluff
is more likely to get you into a crisis than out of one.
If you'd like further information,
don't forget you can download our free guide,
The 10 Key Elements of Crisis Prevention
from the link below.
So thanks for watching and I'll see you next week.