Mar 10
Is a recession the time to cut crisis training?
In these economic times, it’s easy for those in charge of corporate budgets to look everywhere and anywhere to find ways of saving money. Quite often, that means putting a hold on training, travel, outside consultants or just about anything that isn’t vital for the day-to-day operation of the company.
As someone who provides training and consulting services, these budgeting constraints can be more than just a matter of small concern. But, as we talk with our clients these days, we find not everyone views crisis media training, crisis plans and crisis consulting in the same light. Some see it as more of an insurance policy than just a line item in a budget that can be slashed in bad times.
It reminds me of a story my grandfather told me about living through the Great Depression. “Even in the toughest of times,” he said, “you don’t let your insurance policy lapse.” It was, he said, just too dangerous.
And, while there is certainly a difference between media training and insurance, the type of training we conduct, the mock disasters we stage and the crisis plans we write are very much akin to insurance policies. They are a type of insurance against the unplanned and unexpected.
Certainly, no one ever purchases an accident policy hoping they’ll have to use it some day. They buy insurance to protect them from the uncertainties that they could face – as an individual, or as a business. If they could afford to take the loss on their own, insurance companies would be out of business.
It’s a bit that way with the kind training and consulting our firm provides. I doubt any of the companies we work with “assume” they’ll confront a major crisis which would put their crisis management capabilities to the test. But, they’re not willing to stake their company’s survival on the chance that they will never confront a major crisis.
As a chemical plant manager in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, told me years ago regarding the investment he placed in crisis plans and training, “The more prepared I am, the luckier I get.”
Or, as scores of students have told us following crisis training: “This is the kind of training I hope I never have to use. But, I’d rather have it and not use it than need it and not have it.”
Although we have a vested interest in the continuation of crisis plans, media training, mock disasters and the like, so do the organizations we work for. Certainly, you can delay training, scale it down a bit and otherwise find ways to reduce costs, but like insurance, it’s not really something you want to totally lapse.
The bottom line is that crises don’t care who you are, whether you’re prepared or not, or even if there is a recession going on. They are indiscriminate. They treat everyone the same.
- Add new comment:
10:42 AM Feb 7