International SOS provides expert consulting services to help you develop a comprehensive crisis management programme to secure a resilient and prosperous future for your organisation.
SECURITY ESCALATIONS | 2021 TO 2024 IN REVIEW
"The range of crises around the globe in recent years exemplifies the concept of poly-crisis, with varied and often overlapping major incidents challenging organisations’ preparation and crisis response capabilities. From natural disasters in Turkey, Morocco, the Philippines and America, to coups in Africa and South America, to political conflict in Sudan, Ukraine and Peru, to unrest in Haiti, Ecuador and the Middle East, the world has entered an increasingly unstable and volatile (VUCA) period."
Paul Doucet - Director, Security Intelligence & Assistance
Organisations must have robust crisis response plans in place, with clear protocols, assigned roles and responsibilities, and well-trained teams. They need to regularly test, update and refine these plans to ensure effective response coordination when crises inevitably occur. Crisis management is essential for organisational resilience, continuity and recovery in our turbulent global environment.
A HOLISTIC APPROACH
We firmly believe that it is our duty to ensure that our unique methodology - developed over more than 40 years in contact with the most emblematic and devastating crises - is a standard in resilience.
Our methodology, fully align with ISO 22361/31030 requirements, is structured around the three phases of a crisis: Pre crisis, Crisis response and Post crisis. For each of these three phases, we recommend to follow four key activities.
- Before the crisis: identify and map systemic risks, detect and act on weak signals, develop and organise your crisis programme, and train and prepare your teams to face the worst.
- Crisis Response: control the situation by turning "noise into sound", orchestrate stakeholders to ensure “interoperability”, solve the problem by “slowing down to hurry”, and communicate your actions through "coherent and consistent messages".
- Post crisis: provide support to teams and employees affected by the crisis or its management, conduct a hot and cold debrief, review plans by changing what did not work, and reinforce the organisation's strengths. Finally, imagine the next crisis and prepare for it by practicing on the newly revised organisation.
BE PREPARED TO RESPOND IN A PERMA-CRISIS WORLD WITH OUR PROVEN METHODOLOGY
Diagnose
We assess and assist you in identifying potential threats and evaluate your level of maturity.
Identifying potential crises and assessing current preparedness.
Activities include conducting risk assessments to pinpoint high priority threats, auditing existing strategies through maturity assessments, and ensuring leadership alignment. Gaps and vulnerabilities are identified that will inform later planning. The goal is to thoroughly understand risk exposures and preparedness levels across the organisation.Plan & Train
We establish an effective structure to enable you anticipate, respond and recover from crises, while conducting rigorous testing to evaluate preparedness, fortify expertise of your teams, and strengthen your ability to respond.
Involving both designing crisis management programmes and equipping teams to enact them effectively.
Planning activities involve developing policies, procedures, protocols, playbooks, and continuity plans tailored to an organisation's risks. Training then brings these plans to life through immersive simulations, tabletop exercises and drills that build critical response capabilities. Training embeds skills and organisational learning to optimise execution of plans when actual crises occur. The outcome is a crisis-ready organisation skilled in responding rapidly and robustly.Respond
We advise on how the crisis is managed, providing, if necessary, specific expertise.
Crisis experts are deployed when disruptions strike to advise leadership and contain impacts.
Response plans are enacted, assets protected, critical operations maintained and timely communication executed. Support, including mental health support, is provided to impacted staff and stakeholders. The focus is swift and aligned response that minimises disruption, safeguards the organisation, and aids continuity through uncertainty. Structured after action reviews are then conducted, examining the effectiveness of the response and capturing lessons learned to embed ongoing improvement.
EXPERIENCE YOU CAN COUNT ON
Thanks to our experts' diverse and varied expertise, strategic vision and years of practical experience, they are equipped to guide you through any crisis, ensuring a swift and effective resolution.
Thanks to our global footprint, and our extensive worldwide network of Assistance Centres and interdisciplinary partners, we can provide holistic solutions tailored to each situation, offering unrivalled support to companies facing crises covering all three level of action: strategic, operational and tactical.
Our proactive and reactive approach, combined with our strategic resources, enables companies to overcome obstacles, reinvent themselves and thrive in difficult times.