Over the last year, many communities have faced large riots and protests that destroyed public and private property and resulted in hundreds of injuries. While these events carry a certain amount of unpredictability, an organization’s planning and response to these events can minimize losses and, most importantly, keep people safe.
The latest Out Front Ideas with Kimberly and Mark webinar included a panel discussing the risk management challenges associated with civil unrest. Our guests were:
- Anas Al-Hamwi – senior director, occupational health and injury management, Walgreens
- Renata Elias – senior vice president, consulting solutions, Marsh
- Barry Scott – deputy director of finance, risk manager, city of Philadelphia
- Thomas Simoncic – president, Property Americas, Sedgwick
Protect, Prepare and Partner
No response is effective without proper planning and preparedness measures. Employers should consider their situational readiness by identifying tools that exist within their infrastructure, particularly their partnerships. Engaging industry peers, local community leaders and municipalities creates a network of advisers to assist with early communications to all stakeholders. If there are multiple operations locations, empower your leaders at each site to make the right decisions by giving them the tools they need to execute proper procedures.
In planning, public entities need to adapt to allow and protect First Amendment activities while also ensuring lives are protected. While the balance can be tricky, partnering with federal, state and local governments can forecast any potential issues. First responders and police units need to be in constant communication to respond to any event rapidly. Including everyone from fire units to public transit employees ensures a collaborative effort. Keeping communities informed with timely messages keeps both the public and employees safe.
Having a crisis management capability within your organization helps senior leadership respond both quickly and appropriately. Formalize your crisis management plan with reporting incidents, escalation to senior leadership, defining the criteria for an escalation, incident screening and notification and activation of the senior leadership. Once you have buy-in and collaboration, you can align and integrate with all stakeholders to ensure the process is trained and exercised for capabilities.
Property Loss
While civil unrest is not a natural disaster, like hurricanes, these events carry similar characteristics in that they are widespread, occur over different dates and cause varying levels of damage and business interruption. Understanding what your policy covers and does not cover is critical to preparation. Reach out to your partners within your carrier and broker relationships to fully assess your needs. Understanding the definition of occurrence in a policy can determine whether multiple days of civil unrest are considered one deductible. Establishing a timeline is necessary so your partners can scale and meet your needs while finding escalation and remediation points.
While protecting property is critical to restoring business activity, protecting people and their livelihood should always be a priority. Does your business continuity plan include details directing employees where to go if a specific location cannot operate? Will your vendors or suppliers know where to make deliveries? Where will your critical processes take place? All of these items should be addressed to ensure all stakeholders are prepared for a crisis. Mobilization with partners and vendors before an occurrence can affect response time, enabling an organization to get back to business faster.
See also: Did You Use the COVID Down Time?
Prioritize Your People
As you strategize for potential events and develop a continuity plan, people should be your priority. In keeping your employees and the community safe, communication and preparedness are key. Internal communications should be aligned with your strategies to ensure a coordinated response, and making appropriate connections with media partners can assist with disseminating external communications to the community.
Civil unrest training, developed specifically for regions, can help employers establish preparedness measures for their workers. It forms a basic knowledge of staying safe in a crisis while also keeping people informed of the business continuity plan. Communicate with federal agencies and local municipalities to make sure your protocols meet their standards. Make sure your workers have resources like an employee assistance program to address their mental health throughout a crisis. Property can always be replaced, but human lives cannot, so people should always be the starting point when developing your plan.
Lessons Learned
The last year has served as a lesson in crisis for many organizations, especially those experiencing the aftermath of civil unrest for the first time. Responding to the next event requires careful consideration of what was missing in your initial response. Perform internal debriefs and post-incident reviews to highlight any gaps and bridge the silos. And when determining risks, consider all the external factors currently, like labor shortages, logistical supply chain and inventory issues and rising inflation. These can all add to the costs associated with property repairs. Lastly, this past year has taught us that truly anything can happen, so go forward humbly and be prepared for what you do not expect.
