Crisis Management: Strategies, Plans, and Employee Response

Key Takeaways: Effective crisis management covers three phases: Pre-Crisis (prevention), Crisis Response, and Post-Crisis (recovery and learning). HR plays a vital role in protecting employee welfare, which is the foundation of organizational sustainability during a crisis. A 5-step strategic planning process — from risk assessment to stakeholder collaboration — is essential for building organizational resiliency. Using employee surveys during a crisis provides real-time data that allows leaders to course-correct and address roadblocks. Integration of crisis management into a broader continuity plan ensures essential functions are maintained and recovery is accelerated.

Davinder Johal & Alicia Dean

January 15, 2026

Recent global events serve as a reminder that a crisis can occur at any time. Many organizations find themselves unprepared because crises often emerge in unexpected forms and scales, impacting operations across industries and geographies.

Organizations of all types and sizes face a wide range of crisis-related challenges, such as:

Rapidly shifting work arrangements and hybrid policies
Health and safety of employees on the front line
Managing distributed teams and operational continuity
Securing an uninterrupted supply of essential goods
Re-deploying resources during emergencies
Financial stress and economic uncertainty
Navigating recovery and adaptation

Business crises have always been a fact of life. The following are just a few examples:

Global supply chain disruptions affecting multiple industries
Major cybersecurity breaches exposing customer data
Environmental disasters impacting operations and communities
Product safety concerns requiring immediate response
Public safety issues that cause disruption to emotional well-being

The one thing all crises have in common is that they are unanticipated. Because a crisis can affect your organization at any time, it's important to have a crisis management plan in place. HR's role in crisis scenarios is critical to protect the welfare of employees, while ensuring that employees continue to contribute to the organization's sustainability by doing their part in times of crisis. In this article, we'll examine the importance of crisis management and crisis management plan objectives, strategies, and procedures.

What is crisis management?

Crisis management is a structured process that enables an organization to address disruptive events that can harm employees, customers, suppliers, the public, or the company's value.

Crisis management can be divided into three phases:

Pre-Crisis: prevention and preparation for a potential crisis
Crisis Response: responding to the crisis
Post Crisis: fulfilling all commitments that were made during the crisis and looking for better ways to prepare and respond to the next possible crisis.

While crises are of their very nature unpredictable, many can be avoided through prevention, and many others can be mitigated through preparation. This requires assessment of known risks and strategies to prevent and mitigate potential crises associated with those risks through crisis management planning.

Why does crisis management planning drive long-term success?

Because a crisis can strike at any time, organizations should have plans in place to address crises. Around 62% of organizations have some sort of crisis management plan, but few update them regularly. These plans should be completed prior to potential crises and regularly updated, and should clearly establish the processes the organization should follow when dealing with a crisis.

Crises can highlight the organization's vulnerabilities. However, the more plans an organization has to manage a crisis, the less vulnerable it is. When organizations believe they are invulnerable and do not prepare, they are likely to be affected more severely, potentially even impacting their long-term success.

A well-designed plan mitigates critical losses, including:

Profitability: Protecting revenue and minimizing financial strain.
Reputation: Maintaining trust with stakeholders and the public.
Operational Capacity: Ensuring the organization can continue to function under pressure.

Whether the crisis is a natural disaster, a highly-publicized lawsuit, or a damaging product review, the organization should be ready to take focused and emphatic action immediately. Because employees are the heart of the organization, HR should place utmost importance on people when developing crisis management plans; without employees, the organization cannot function. HR must ensure that employees are well-versed in crisis management procedures, to build resiliency against future crises.

How can you create a crisis management plan?

The steps for developing effective crisis management procedures are as follows:

Identify and assess the different types of crises that could disrupt the organization:
- Financial
- Personnel
- Operational or organizational
- Technology and cybersecurity
- Natural disasters
- Psychological safety
Determine the business impact for each type of crisis, such as lost or delayed sales, customer dissatisfaction and attrition, or increased expenses or regulatory fines.
Identify the actions that would be required to respond effectively to the crisis. Think about steps that would need to be taken, the resources that would be required, and how employees can help. For example, creating a library of resources for remote and hybrid working can help organizations maintain productivity during disruptions. Also consider employee health and well-being support, such as employee assistance programs (EAPs).
Once an effective contingency for each potential crisis has been determined, build out the plan with relevant stakeholders.
HR leaders must ensure that the crisis plan takes into account the health, safety, and welfare of employees. By collaborating with the organization's leaders, HR can guarantee that employees' welfare is considered within all crisis management plans.

Once the broad outlines of a crisis management response to each of the various scenarios is mapped out, the following strategies can be used to flesh out plans to cover all the bases.

Which strategies build an effective crisis management plan?

Have a designated crisis management team that is properly trained, and decide who will be involved in the actions that will need to be taken in each scenario by pre-assigning roles and responsibilities.
Work with members of leadership, the crisis response team, and other key stakeholders when identifying risks to the organization, to ensure all relevant threats and vulnerabilities that could impact the company are being taken into consideration.
Involve key employees, such as department heads, to provide insight into available resources and potential hurdles. For certain crisis scenarios you may also need input from outside parties, such as contractors and partners that work closely with your business.
Keep in mind any relevant regulatory requirements, and determine how you will continue to meet them, even in the midst of a crisis.
Pre-draft some crisis messages and communications. Timely and consistent communication is extremely important in a crisis; consider how and with whom you will communicate. Crisis communication strategies may include online chats, employee surveys, and the use of multi-media channels to communicate.
Conduct exercises to test the plans and teams annually or more frequently.
Look to organizations that deal with crises regularly. Crisis situations are simply business as usual for them, and they have strategies that may be of use to your own organization.
Revisit and update plans regularly and as necessary.

How can surveys support crisis management?

HR leaders keep organizations and employees connected. They need a reliable way to track both business conditions and employee sentiment.

During a crisis, rapid feedback is essential. Targeted employee surveys give leaders the data they need to make timely decisions and remove obstacles.

Employee surveys should feature tailored questions directed towards issues where HR and senior leaders most need information.

During a crisis, surveys serve as high-impact tools to:

Support Well-Being: Understand how employees are coping personally and what support they need during challenging times.
Reveal Needs: Provide employees what they need to remain productive while navigating current circumstances.
Ensure Inclusivity: Allow employees at every level to have their voices heard.
Drive Agility: Provide the data necessary for leaders to course-correct and remove operational roadblocks.

Employee responses are likely to change as a crisis develops, so it's important to continually survey throughout and post crisis.

Employees determine how fast and how well an organization recovers from a crisis, so they should be placed at the forefront. Organizations must listen during these critical moments to understand employee needs.

While there is no one correct way to listen to employees, surveys provide the opportunity to learn about employees' concerns and demonstrate that leadership cares about their well-being. As organizational priorities rapidly change during a crisis, it's more important than ever to effectively listen, support, and engage employees through every step of the journey.

How does crisis management differ from business continuity?

Business continuity describes the organization's ability to maintain essential functions during and after a crisis has occurred. Planning for business continuity is key to allowing the organization to return to normal operations quickly in the post-crisis phase.

The crisis management plan is a component of the overall business continuity plan. A well-designed crisis management plan for business continuity makes handling a crisis easier and reduces disruption. However, plans must be tested.

Organizations that have crisis management plans can recover from a crisis much more quickly than those that do not. The benefit to the organization in financial terms is that they are able to handle disruption caused by crises and get back to business quickly. Having a crisis management plan also demonstrates to clients (and investors) that the organization is reliable and robust. An organization that has a clear plan for recovery with identified appropriate actions compares favorably with competitors who have not prepared for potential crises.

Recovery action plans are key for successful business continuity. Employees need to know their roles, responsibilities, and the actions they should take in the event of a serious interruption of operations. Continued employee engagement is also crucial to business continuity. Employees are the main contributors in the recovery process, and their welfare is critical in ensuring effective recovery. Engaged employees will want their organization to succeed and prosper. Successfully weathering a crisis can allow the organization to become more efficient, flexible, and responsive, making it stronger post-crisis.

Once the crisis has passed it may no longer be the primary focus, but that doesn't mean crisis management work is complete. It is crucial to review the crisis management plan and determine how well it worked. Crises should be viewed as learning opportunities, highlighting areas that were 'vulnerable' during the crisis. Learning from previous experiences can help to minimize the effects of similar future crises, enrich knowledge, and inform new practices. HR's role in recovery is prominent in helping both the organization and employees to regain their composure. Surveying after the crisis will reveal what employees need to get their lives—and the organization's productivity—back on track.

What is the way forward?

The Perceptyx platform can help you keep your finger on the pulse of your employees' perceptions, so you can see what really matters. By identifying meaningful actions to drive sustainable improvements in your organization, you can build a more flexible, resilient organization. Get in touch to see how we can help your organization build a people analytics solution tailored to your strategic goals.