With all the things happening around the world these days, the global business scene is in an uneasy situation. Because of that, companies are now rethinking their crisis management strategies. And for a startup business like yours, this can be doubly important.
Here, outsourcing can be a surprisingly effective strategy for dealing with such situations. Let’s explore how you can use it to safeguard your business during these times.
The Elements Of A Crisis Management Strategy
To better understand what role outsourcing will play in your crisis management strategy, we should first have a good idea of what that plan will contain. There are four key components that your plan needs to have.
Priorities
Developing your startup business crisis management plan should always start with identifying the things to prioritize. That will help you more effectively allocate resources, including outsourced ones, in response to the crisis.
For instance, you might want to go with the following general priorities.
- People: Safeguarding the livelihood of your employees and other stakeholders, while ensuring continuous customer service during times of crisis.
- Assets: You need to determine which assets to safeguard during a crisis and which ones need to be disposed of and replaced to maintain the business.
- Recovery: You have to decide when the recovery plan should happen in your crisis management timeline.
Once you have your priorities sorted out, you can get a clearer idea of how the crisis management strategy will take effect during an event. You still need to consult stakeholders on this prioritization to ensure everyone is on board.
Policy Guidelines
Your priorities will directly influence the crisis management policies you put in place. Ensure that all the policies you outline are consistent across the different departments. What makes this challenging is that departments might have different needs depending on how the crisis has impacted them.
Image from BrandMentions.
With that in mind, you also need to put some flexibility into these policies. Consider multiple scenarios and determine what kind of shifts these policies need to make to meet them. You would also want to ensure that these are robust enough to handle unplanned situations.
Procedures
Under your policy guidelines, you need to develop sound procedures to support them. When developing these, ensure that they are easy to implement. You don’t want your team struggling with implementation during a crisis.
However, you should know the nuances of the departments that use these procedures. For instance, limitations in the number of personnel can affect how well your business can implement a particular procedure. With that, you will need to come up with alternatives to help your departments better execute these procedures.
Details
The above three elements provide the general structure of your plan. On the other hand, the last element is the specific details that bring it into action. Some of these might include:
- The chain of command: Provide a clear organizational chart for the people who are responsible for implementing the strategy.
- Activation protocols: These are the exact triggers that will put the plan into action.
- Response action plans: These are the exact plans you will implement for different scenarios. You might also want to outline alternate strategies.
The details of your plan will vary depending on the above three elements. Additionally, these might change well before you put it into action because of intervening circumstances. Thus, your startup business needs a solution that suits the situation.
Where Outsourcing Comes In For Your Startup Business Crisis Management
In essence, your startup business is already creating some form of safety net when outsourcing in general. For instance, you often outsource to fill the need for more personnel. During situations where that need increases greatly, you can quickly work with your provider to meet those challenges.
Here, you take the idea to its logical conclusion. By incorporating it as a part of your overall crisis management strategy, you can bring in another party to help you devise and implement the latter.
Image from People Matters.
To start, you can do the prioritization element much easier. When deciding which aspects of the business to prioritize during a crisis, you might still be bothered by where you will get additional resources for the least prioritized ones.
With outsourcing, this becomes less of a concern. That is because you can readily move those less prioritized areas to the provider. They will then be the ones to bring the needed resources for these areas. Additionally, these firms are very flexible, giving you better adaptability during critical times.
Keeping Critical Startup Business Functions Going
An important aspect of crisis management is making sure that functions vital to the business remain working. While the entire list can vary from company to company, some of the functions that you would want to keep going include:
- Human resources
- Payroll management
- Customer Support
- Supply chain management
- Internal communications
The idea here is that, by keeping these functions going, you will be able to do business at a suitable minimum to bounce back more effectively once the crisis is over.
Outsourcing is effective for this purpose. This even if the crisis impacts your teams severely. However, signing up multiple partners for each of these functions can make things a lot more complicated.
Instead of going through that, Virtua Solutions can provide you with a more robust team. Our agents can fit in different roles, owing to their experience in various industries. What’s more, we can adapt these teams to meet changing needs during a crisis. That flexibility is crucial, as it helps you better position your business.
Preparing Your Startup Business For Recovery
Once the crisis subsides, your business should be ready to bounce back. Virtua Solutions is there to help you make that comeback. Upon your request, we will expand our team to provide you with more resources.
Beyond that, we will aid you in implementing and improving your recovery plan. Our team has years of experience helping companies expand their operations. With that knowledge, you can count on us to help you reestablish your footing.
No one wants to see the business they have worked hard to establish get shut down because of a crisis. With us by your side, you know you have something strong to lean on. Contact us today and safeguard your startup business through outsourcing.
Related Resources: