Why Corporations Need Risk Assessment and Management

Corporations, especially the large multinational corporations with which Jonathan Tetzlaff has worked for decades, operate in diverse and often high-risk locations around the world. Best-in-class corporations create consistent and structured risk assessment and management programs. These programs mitigate risks and speed recovery.

Crisis Management and Emergency Response

Crisis Management and Emergency Response are extraordinarily time-sensitive endeavors. In the minutes to hours after an emergency or disaster, it is essential to make the right decisions in a responsible and reasoned manner.

Conducting crisis management operations in an unplanned or ad hoc method can be a prescription for disaster. Even the most experienced and thoughtful managers can be stressed to the point of breaking when faced with a crisis that is entirely new to them such as an active shooter/hostile intruder, an evacuation of employees from a war zone, a kidnapping or natural disaster.

A state-of-the-art crisis management program provides training and documentation in advance, so an approved, effective structure supports informed and effective decision-making.

Crisis management preparation and training is often the difference between success and failure. And, in a major crisis, “failure” may mean that you’re suddenly dealing with a life-and-death situation.

The Value of Business Continuity

Business continuity is, in many ways, the “next step” after a corporation initiates its crisis management and emergency response activities. An effective business continuity program assesses corporate vulnerabilities and single points of failure prior to an incident occurring. For instance, a program can provide answers to important questions like:

• Do we have more than one supplier for our key raw materials?
• If so, are the suppliers in different locations geographically so that one disaster doesn’t impact both suppliers?
• What if the primary workplace is inaccessible following an active shooter situation or a natural disaster?
• Are alternative work sites available?
• Do they have needed supplies?
• Does management know their location and access requirements?

Statistics vary by source, but many experts identify high rates of business failure following a major security incident or natural disaster. Planning responses in advance – including ways to utilize existing resources and assets in a more effective manner – can be the difference between success and failure.

Why We Are Passionate about Our Work

Supporting and guiding corporations in the areas of crisis management and business continuity is challenging and interesting. In most cases, corporations have assets that could be deployed to assist in a disaster if arrangements are made in advance. In many cases, corporations have “centers of excellence,” which could support aspects of company operations in a crisis. However, without advance planning and an organized crisis management structure, senior management may be unaware of these resources.  Under pressure to respond quickly, they may waste time and money contracting with outside suppliers despite the existence of in-house capabilities.

Tetzlaff Risk Management, LLC (“TRM”) can identify and link people and resources that already exist within the corporation, creating an integrated and effective in-house response.

What Success Looks Like

While leading the crisis management function at a large multinational corporation, owner Jonathan Tetzlaff coordinated central elements of the company’s global response to an incident. In this case, it was a large earthquake in Asia that created a tsunami which killed thousands of people and triggered the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Leveraging our experienced and practiced crisis management/business continuity structure, we created a highly-focused response:

• one set of decision-makers;
• an integrated way to provide support globally;
• and a communications apparatus which lifted much of the day-to-day communications responsibilities from country management so that they could focus on managing the crisis itself.

This was, by all accounts, a rapid and successful response which utilized existing resources within the company to help thousands of employees in the affected countries.