Site Incident Response and Crisis Management
You need a program that ties your distributed sites (that’s the tidy term we use for any type of facility – offices, distribution centers, manufacturing, buying offices, etc.) into your overall emergency and crisis framework.
Even at complex sites with experienced leadership, you need to define how an incident scales up through the levels of teams. You need carefully mapped and detailed plans, training, and testing with scaled exercises.
We call this program SIRT, and it’s a powerful way to apply governance across a complex organization. And this includes decision-making from the local level. If you’re interested in what types of things a SIRT does, check out this blog post.
What’s a SIRT?
SIRT is the team who would make decisions in an emergency and then transition the site to crisis management. We can achieve efficiency and leverage an approach that is focused on strategy and leaves more tactical response to local emergency responders.
A SIRT Plan establishes protocols for coordination and decision-making at the site when an incident develops that could eventually become a crisis for the company.
The SIRT Plan includes guidance on how management of incidents at the site integrates with other response efforts and structures across all levels of the organization.
What do we consider an incident?
Basically, an incident is any emergency or crisis situation that poses potential or actual harm to employees or the community, or company assets, including reputation.
Three critical questions for activation of a SIRT:
- Have employees been seriously harmed or is there potential for harm?
- Could the incident interfere with the ability to operate?
- Is there potential for negative news media coverage or community backlash?
You can check out our constantly updated Glossary if you need more definitions.
