The Importance of Building a Crisis-Ready Culture

Having a crisis plan in place is essential - but a plan alone isn’t enough if your people aren’t prepared to use it or if it’s just a tick-and-flick exercise. The most resilient organisations don’t just document crisis procedures - they embed crisis preparedness into their culture so that employees at all levels understand their roles, responsibilities and decision-making processes under pressure.

Without a crisis-ready culture, even the best-written plan can fail.

In this article, we explore:

• Why crisis-readiness is a cultural shift, not just a document.

• The key elements of a crisis-ready culture.

• How leaders can foster preparedness and resilience across their organisation.

Need a structured approach to building crisis resilience? The Crisis Plan Template provides a customisable framework for creating an actionable, organisation-wide crisis management plan.

1️⃣ Why Crisis-Readiness Must Be Cultural, Not Just Procedural

Many businesses invest time and effort into developing detailed crisis plans but then fail to execute effectively when a real crisis strikes.

• Employees are unsure of their roles.

• Executives hesitate to make fast decisions.

• Crisis teams scramble to figure out the next steps.

What’s the problem? The plan exists, but the culture isn’t prepared.

A crisis-ready culture ensures that:
✔ Employees anticipate crises instead of reacting with confusion.
✔ Leaders are decisive under pressure.
✔ Teams know their responsibilities instinctively.

2️⃣ Key Elements of a Crisis-Ready Culture

To build a crisis-ready culture, organisations must embed awareness, accountability and adaptability into their daily operations.

1. Leadership Commitment and Visibility

Crisis readiness starts at the top of the organisation. If executives and senior managers don’t prioritise crisis preparedness, employees won’t take it seriously either.

What Leaders Must Do:
→ Champion crisis preparedness initiatives—don’t delegate them entirely to risk teams.
→ Conduct regular crisis simulations with executives actively involved.
→ Communicate why resilience matters to every employee, not just the crisis team.

Consider how well your organisation embeds resilience into its DNA. A failure to reinforce resilience from senior executives usually stems from: a lack of resilience literacy, a lack of engagement or a misalignment between resilience priorities and broader business objectives, leading to it being deprioritised in decision-making.

2. Crisis Training and Scenario Exercises

A written crisis plan doesn’t work if employees haven’t practiced it. Organisations should embed training and simulations into routine business operations.

What Organisations Must Do:
→ Conduct crisis simulation exercises at least once a year, more frequently if your organisation works in a high risk industry, sector or geography.
→ Rotate scenarios so employees experience different types of crises.
→ Ensure all levels of staff participate, not just senior leadership.

Want to ensure your team is crisis-ready? CrisisCompass can design, develop and facilitate crisis exercises tailored to your business and the threats you face, and then help you identify friction points that could leave you vulnerable in a crisis.

3. Decentralised Decision-Making in a Crisis

Organisations often fail in crises because they rely too much on top-down decision-making.
🚨 If executives aren’t immediately available, will employees know what to do?

What Organisations Must Do:
→ Empower mid-level managers to make critical crisis decisions when needed.
→ Structure crisis teams so that there are primary and alternate personnel nominated for key decision-making roles.
→ Create a decision-making framework that enables faster response times.
→ Ensure that teams understand what authority they have in an emergency.

4. Crisis Communication Must Be Second Nature

In a crisis, organisations must communicate quickly, clearly and consistently. Employees should be trained to deliver key messages under pressure.

What Organisations Must Do:
→ Train spokespeople and department heads in crisis communication techniques.
→ Create pre-approved messaging templates for different crisis types.
→ Ensure teams know how to escalate communication internally and externally.

The CrisisCompass Crisis Communication Plan Template includes best-practice messaging frameworks and escalation protocols.

5. Learning From Past Incidents

Crises will happen - but a crisis-ready culture ensures that organisations improve after every event. Truly resilience focussed organisations use a crisis to identify what worked, what didn’t and what needs to change. This is a double-edged sword though: doing this correctly can drive employee commitment and engagement, while executing poorly can amplify any negative feelings staff may have about how the organisation managed the incident - which can also undermine staff buy-in for any follow up security, crisis or resilience initiatives implemented in future.

What Organisations Must Do:
→ Conduct Post-Incident Reviews (PIRs) after every crisis event.
→ Identify gaps and weaknesses in crisis response.
→ Make improvements part of organisational learning.

Use the CrisisCompass Post-Incident Review (PIR) Template to standardise how your team captures lessons learned and ensures continuous improvement. If your team needs more independence for a review process, CrisisCompass can support you there too.

3️⃣ How to Foster a Crisis-Ready Culture in Your Organisation

Creating a crisis-resilient culture takes time, but businesses can accelerate the process with the following three steps:

Step 1: Integrate Crisis Preparedness into Everyday Operations

❌ Wrong Approach: Treating crisis management as a once-a-year compliance task.
✔ Right Approach: Embedding crisis readiness into daily decision-making and business strategy.

How to Do It:
→ Assign crisis leadership roles at different levels of the organisation.
→ Link crisis preparedness to business goals (e.g. risk mitigation, supply chain resilience).
→ Reinforce why crisis readiness benefits employees, not just executives.

Step 2: Reward and Recognise Crisis Preparedness Efforts

❌ Wrong Approach: Only talking about resilience when a crisis occurs.
✔ Right Approach: Making crisis readiness a core part of company culture and performance reviews.

How to Do It:
→ Recognise and reward employees who identify risks early.
→ Integrate crisis preparedness metrics into leadership performance reviews.
→ Highlight success stories of teams that handled crises well.

Step 3: Conduct Regular Crisis Readiness Audits

❌ Wrong Approach: Assuming your organisation is prepared because a plan exists.
✔ Right Approach: Testing and improving crisis readiness continuously.

How to Do It:
→ Schedule regular crisis readiness assessments, tied to your organisations risk exposure.
→ Update crisis response strategies based on evolving threats.
→ Engage experts for external evaluations. These could be your in-house staff if you have the necessary staff with experience, qualifications and accreditations, but even if so, you should consider an independent perspective as well.

Final Thoughts: A Crisis-Ready Culture is a Competitive Advantage

The best organisations don’t just have a crisis plan - they have a crisis-ready culture where preparedness is second nature.

✔ Training, leadership commitment and decentralised decision-making create resilience.
✔ A crisis-ready culture ensures that employees respond instinctively, reducing business disruptions.

Want to test your organisation’s crisis-readiness? Let’s talk resilience and start with a crisis simulation today.