The Day Your Crisis Plan Becomes Toilet Paper: What 78% of Australian Businesses Get Wrong About Emergency Preparedness

Here's something that'll make you uncomfortable: your workplace crisis plan is probably rubbish.

I've been consulting across Australia for the past 17 years, and I've seen more "crisis management" plans that wouldn't survive contact with an actual crisis than I care to count. These beautiful, bound documents sitting in boardrooms gathering dust while the real emergencies happen in the corridor outside.

Between you and me, most crisis planning is just expensive procrastination dressed up as preparation.

The Great Australian Crisis Planning Myth

We love our plans in this country. We plan barbecues, we plan holidays, we even plan our Sunday afternoon naps. But when it comes to workplace crises? We write documents instead of building capabilities.

I'll give you a perfect example. Last year, I was called into a mining company in Perth after their "minor incident" that shut down operations for three days. Their crisis plan was 47 pages long. Forty-seven! Know how many people could find it when the proverbial hit the fan? Zero.

The security guard was using his initiative and common sense while the management team was hunting through SharePoint folders like they were searching for the Holy Grail.

What Actually Constitutes a Workplace Crisis

This is where most organisations get it spectacularly wrong. They're planning for Hollywood disasters - explosions, natural catastrophes, zombie apocalypses (okay, maybe not the last one). Meanwhile, the real crises that'll sink your business are happening right under your nose.

Your key employee having a mental health breakdown during your biggest project delivery. That's a crisis.

A social media storm because someone filmed your manager being a complete tool to a customer. Crisis.

Your main supplier going bust overnight.

Three quarters of your IT team quitting in the same month because they found out the new grad is earning more than them.

The lift breaking down when you've got the board meeting in the penthouse and your chairman has a dodgy knee.

These aren't hypotheticals. I've dealt with every single one of these scenarios in the last two years alone. And guess what? None of them appeared in those beautifully laminated crisis management flowcharts.

The Problem with Traditional Crisis Planning

Traditional crisis planning follows the same tired formula: identify risks, assess likelihood, develop response procedures, assign responsibilities, review annually. It's logical, methodical, and about as useful as a chocolate teapot when things go sideways.

The issue isn't with the framework - it's with the mindset. We treat crisis planning like we're building IKEA furniture. Follow the instructions, tick the boxes, job done. But crises don't read instruction manuals.

I remember sitting in a crisis management workshop in Brisbane a few years back. The facilitator was explaining their "proven methodology" while outside the window, there was a bloke with a angle grinder accidentally setting the building's alarm system off. Half the participants missed the next hour because they were dealing with an unplanned evacuation.

The irony was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Most crisis plans fail because they're built by people who've never actually been in a crisis. They're written by committees who think emergencies will politely wait while everyone consults the procedure manual and follows the decision tree.

Here's what actually happens: everything goes to hell simultaneously, nobody can find the crisis manual, the person designated as "crisis coordinator" is on annual leave in Bali, and somehow the office junior ends up making executive decisions because they're the only one keeping their head.

Building Crisis Resilience Instead of Crisis Plans

Instead of massive planning documents, I advocate for what I call "crisis resilience" - building your team's capacity to handle anything that gets thrown at them, whether it's in your plan or not.

This means focusing on principles over procedures, capabilities over checklists.

Start with communication protocols that actually work. Not the formal cascade system that assumes everyone checks their emails every five minutes, but real-world communication that acknowledges people might be in meetings, on site, or dealing with their own emergencies.

Slack channels that include key suppliers and contractors. WhatsApp groups for immediate notifications. Physical notice boards for when the internet goes down. Yes, they still make those.

Develop decision-making frameworks instead of decision trees. Teach your people how to think through problems rather than memorise responses to scenarios you've imagined.

The most resilient organisations I work with have what I call "controlled chaos" exercises. Once a quarter, they throw a random curveball at their team - "Your main computer system just crashed, your warehouse is flooding, and there's a journalist in reception asking about the incident that hasn't happened yet. Go."

No scripts, no predetermined responses. Just see what happens.

And you know what? These exercises reveal more about your crisis readiness than any risk assessment matrix ever will.

The Human Element: Your Greatest Asset and Biggest Risk

Here's something most crisis planners ignore: people don't follow procedures when they're stressed, scared, or confused. They revert to instinct and training.

This is why stress management training is actually more valuable than most crisis planning workshops. If your people can't handle pressure, your crisis plan is just expensive kindling.

I learned this the hard way during a factory fire in Adelaide. The evacuation plan was perfect on paper - clear exit routes, designated assembly points, trained fire wardens. What they didn't account for was the human tendency to go back for personal belongings, to look for colleagues who might be missing, to try to be heroes.

The fire wardens spent more time herding people away from the building than getting them out in the first place.

Since then, I always tell my clients: plan for panic, not for procedure.

The Technology Trap

Every crisis plan I see these days mentions "digital communication systems" and "cloud-based coordination platforms." Fair dinkum, half the time the crisis is that your technology has failed!

The Brisbane floods in 2011 taught us this lesson hard. All those beautifully designed digital systems were useless when the power went out and the internet went down. The organisations that coped best were the ones with analog backup systems.

Paper lists of contact numbers. Physical meeting points. Radio communication. Old-school stuff that doesn't need WiFi or charged batteries.

I still carry a laminated card in my wallet with key contact numbers written in actual ink. My business partners think I'm a dinosaur until their phones die during an emergency and they're asking to borrow my "antique" contact list.

Small Business vs Corporate Crisis Planning

The approaches that work for Telstra or BHP don't scale down to smaller operations. Small businesses have advantages in crisis management that big corporations can only dream of - speed, flexibility, and the ability to make decisions without convening a committee.

But they also have vulnerabilities. When your "IT department" is your nephew who comes in on weekends, and your "crisis management team" is whoever happens to be in the office that day, you need a different approach.

Small business crisis planning should focus on three things: cash flow protection, key person dependency, and external support networks.

Most small businesses I work with are one key person away from disaster. The owner who knows all the passwords, the accountant who understands the books, the sales manager who has all the client relationships in their head rather than in a CRM system.

You need redundancy in knowledge, not just in systems.

Industry-Specific Realities

Manufacturing faces different crises than professional services. Retail has different vulnerabilities than construction. But most crisis planning treats all businesses like they're interchangeable widgets.

In my experience working with team development training across industries, I've seen that the best crisis preparedness is industry-specific but principle-based.

A restaurant's crisis might be a gas leak, a food safety incident, or a key chef walking out on New Year's Eve. A law firm's crisis might be a data breach, a conflict of interest discovery, or their main partner having a stroke.

Different triggers, same underlying need: the ability to maintain operations while dealing with disruption.

Construction companies that I work with have gotten very good at crisis management because their industry is inherently unpredictable. Weather, accidents, supply chain disruptions, regulatory changes - they deal with mini-crises constantly.

Other industries could learn from this approach: treat crisis management as an ongoing capability rather than an emergency response.

The Real Test: When Everything Goes Wrong at Once

The ultimate test of crisis planning isn't whether you can handle a single emergency. It's whether you can cope when multiple things go wrong simultaneously.

This happened to a client of mine in 2020 - small manufacturing business in Melbourne. COVID lockdowns, key supplier going bankrupt, major equipment failure, and their main client delaying payments. Four separate crises, all hitting in the same week.

Their crisis plan covered exactly zero of this scenario because who plans for everything going wrong at once?

But they survived because they'd built resilience instead of relying on plans. They had diverse supplier relationships, cash reserves, cross-trained staff, and - most importantly - a leadership team that could think on their feet rather than follow procedures.

What Good Crisis Planning Actually Looks Like

Forget the 47-page documents. Good crisis planning fits on a laminated A4 sheet that everyone carries in their wallet.

Contact details for key people - not just their work numbers, but their mobiles and home phones. Decision-making authority - who can spend money, who can talk to media, who can shut down operations. Communication channels that work when the main systems fail.

And scenarios. Not detailed procedures, but thinking exercises. "If we lost our main revenue stream tomorrow, what would we do?" "If our building became unusable, where would we operate from?" "If our key manager was hit by a bus, who could step in?"

The best crisis-prepared organisation I know runs monthly "bus scenarios" - what happens if different key people get metaphorically hit by buses. It sounds morbid, but it builds resilience.

They also have what they call "stupid question sessions" where people can ask about scenarios that seem unlikely. "What if we accidentally sent the payroll file to all our competitors?" "What if a customer slipped and broke their leg in our reception area?" "What if the building next door caught fire?"

Most of these questions never turn into real situations. But the thinking process builds capability.

The Australian Context: What We Do Well (and What We Don't)

Australians are generally good at crisis response. We're pragmatic, we help each other out, and we don't panic easily. Look at how communities respond to bushfires, floods, or cyclones.

But in business contexts, we often overthink the planning and under-prepare the people.

We also have a cultural tendency to assume she'll be right, which works great for minor problems but can bite us hard when facing major disruption.

The businesses that handle crises best in my experience are the ones that combine Australian pragmatism with structured preparation. They plan for the worst but hope for the best, and they're ready to throw the plan out the window if the situation demands it.

The Post-Crisis Reality

Nobody talks about what happens after the crisis is over. The cleanup, the lessons learned, the PTSD, the relationship damage, the financial impact that continues long after the immediate emergency has passed.

Good crisis planning includes recovery phases, not just response phases. How do you rebuild customer confidence? How do you support staff who've been traumatised? How do you prevent the same crisis happening again without becoming paralysed by over-planning?

I've worked with teams who handled the crisis brilliantly but fell apart during the recovery because nobody had thought past the immediate emergency response.

Making It Happen: Practical Steps for Better Crisis Preparedness

Start small. Pick one potential crisis scenario that keeps you awake at night and work through it properly. Not with flowcharts and committee meetings, but with actual people doing actual things.

Build relationships before you need them. Know your local emergency services contacts. Have backup suppliers identified. Create informal networks with other business owners who might be able to help each other out.

Test your assumptions. Most crisis plans are based on guesses about how people will behave and what resources will be available. Find ways to test these assumptions safely.

And accept that you can't plan for everything. The goal isn't to prevent all possible crises - it's to build your organisation's ability to survive and adapt when the unexpected happens.

Because it will happen. The only question is whether you'll be ready.

Related Articles:

• Brand Local Posts - Essential workplace resilience strategies
• Focus Group Blog - Leadership insights for crisis management