Designing Context-Driven Crisis Simulations for Resilient Organizations Online Program

Program Overview

Resilience has become a prerequisite characteristic for organizations in this current era characterized by persistent turbulence emanating from natural and anthropogenic hazards. Resilience is underpinned by the ability of the organization to perpetuate practices that support preparedness and foresight on risks, as well as the agility and flexibility to direct organizational action towards a strategic vision in turbulent contexts. One of the ways in which organizations perpetuate resilient practices is through the development of their Business Continuity Plan (BCP), which is a documented system of procedures and instructions that enable organizations to deal with disruptions.

Often, however, the implementation of BCPs during a crisis or a disaster is met with challenges because of context mismatch and/or because organizational members freeze, become disconcerted, and forget their BCPs. Ultimately, BCPs, alongside resilient practices have to be rehearsed and internalized so that they become a muscle memory across all levels of the organization. This can be achieved through the design of context-driven crisis simulations as a way of training, rehearsing, remembering, and assessing the application and limits of BCPs.

Program Objectives

This program aims to make the participants champions of organizational resilience by equipping them with the techniques and skillsets necessary to effectively implement and appraise their respective BCPs. The program focuses on addressing the challenges they face during BCP implementation through realistic and context-driven design of crisis simulations, alongside other techniques necessary to advocate for resilience across all levels of the organization.

What You Will Learn

This course is composed of five sessions that utilize interactive and immersive methodologies that tackle the following themes:

Different advocacy and training techniques to advocate for BCP and resilience across all levels of the organization
Designing crisis simulation and tabletop exercises relevant to the context of the organization (virtual and non-virtual)
Testing and learning from the crisis simulation
Communicating results from the crisis simulation, and integrating it with organizational operations

Key Benefits

Participants will learn to design and experience crisis simulations as a way of testing the viability of their BCPs and as a way of perpetuating a culture of resilience. They will also learn to integrate learnings from the simulation into their organizational operations.

Who Should Attend

This program is recommended for professionals involved in business continuity, risk, communication and public relations, organizational development, as well as decision-makers at the executive level.