From terrorist to tornados to a lack of telephone service, many of the nations businesses and non-profit organizations are ill prepared to deal with crises, according to a new report released by the New York University’s Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response (CCPR) and The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI). Government agencies were also found to be grossly unprepared, leaving them potentially unable to respond to recovery needs.
The report, Predicting Organizational Crisis Readiness: Perspectives and Practices toward a Pathway to Preparedness, reviewed literature, analyzed preparedness recommendations, and evaluated leader opinion surveys before determining organizations are caught off guard by disaster because they fail to make preparedness an important part of their business. Crisis plans often don’t exist and when they do, employees are often unaware of their roles. To remedy the situation, the report recommends organizations give crisis readiness the same budget and priority as other operations and that, “crisis management must be a lasting organizational commitment.”