This post is the eleventh ‘Lessons Learned’ from my experiences in several recentWorst Case Drills (WCDs). Each ‘Lessons Learned’ focuses on one specific issue revealed in the WCDs that affects communicators’ ability to communicate in a crisis. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope it helps!
This post is the tenth ‘Lessons Learned’ from my experiences in several recentWorst Case Drills (WCDs). Each ‘Lessons Learned’ focuses on one specific issue revealed in the WCDs that affects communicators’ ability to communicate in a crisis. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope it helps!
WCD Lessons Learned posted to date:
#1: The approval dragon lives!
#2: Don’t do your old job in your new job
#3: Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging
#4: Build cooperation in the JIC
#5: Can you send content to stakeholders?
#6: Adapt, adapt, adapt – adopt, adopt, adopt
#8: JIC/Liaison Cooperation is Key
#9: Promote Effective Social Media Use
#10: Share the public’s Key Concerns
A quick reminder: Effective drill performance is NOT the end goal of drills: Effective RESPONSE performance is. Don’t fixate on ‘winning’ a drill; focus on being ready for an actual event. If a review of your drill capabilities reveals shortcomings, don’t wait for the next WCD. Fix it now!
There’s a mini Improvement Plan for each Lesson Learned, to help you ensure your readiness in an actual incident. Each action should fit into a coffee break, unless it reveals the need for more work – no guarantees then! (But contact me if you need help!)
Solve your staffing challenges
Drills are almost always staff and time constrained. The drill scenario activity occurs within a single operational period. Everybody who will work the scenario are already ‘activated’ and prepared to test their response mettle. This limited number of participants work as fast as they can in a time limited setting and go home tired and satisfied at the end of drill, almost always within a single day.
Real incidents are different: In an actual worst-case response, JIC and Liaison would be active for several weeks. JIC members will work faster, harder and longer than they ever have before. A basic axiom of packing to attend a response is ‘take extra shirts’. You will usually be responding for longer than you think!
A high level of response communication typically lasts for several weeks, followed by a longer, declining level of activity while recovery activities are completed, often followed by ongoing stakeholder engagement by the RP until tertiary communication around anniversaries, similar events, investigations, etc. is completed.
Someone has to do it!
While each of these levels of communication is different, one element remains the same: The ‘someone’ is likely to be the RP. You
Having enough communication staff available will be an issue from the first moments. It starts with an initial activation of available communicators, some responding physically to the JIC, some supporting virtually from their laptops. A hybrid JIC will inevitably be formed, dependent on email, cell phones, texts and online meetings, while a physical JIC expands through the first hours and endures as long at Unified Command is in place.
Responses eat communicators.
How many people do you really need, and where will they come from? People can only work so long before they need to step away. Inevitably a room full of communication resources starts to empty out if you’re not ready and able to get more people into the room.
A worst-case response will likely endure for multiple weeks. JIC operational periods are typically 24 hours periods. Each period typically has three shifts. Operational periods are planned for the expected duration of the response.
How do you determine staffing needs for rotating that ensure an adequate presence for each shift? Let’s do the math for a two-week mobilization:
- 16 JIC participants needed per operation period
- 6 persons for shift #1, ( 8:00am-4:00pm)
- 6 persons for shift #2, (4:00pm – Midnight),
- 2 persons for shift #3 (Midnight – 8:00am)
- 14 operation periods (two weeks), availability of 70% (5 on, 2 off, 5 on),
- Total staff needed for two weeks = 16/.7 = 23
As you can see, you may need significantly more communicators than you have. Where do you find other communicators, and when? That’s your challenge for NOW. The best time to identify communicators is when you don’t need them: When you do need them you’ll be too busy to find them, consumed with immediate needs.
Where do you look?
Develop a list of communication resources that includes their contact information from:
- Within your organization. Who do you have who can help?
- Local communicators with experience in your industry, preferably response experience.
- Regional communicator networks may be available in your area. These coalitions of communicators can often provide highly trained and competent communication professionals.
- Within industry networks. Keep track of the ebb and flow of communicators in your area.
Remember federal, state and local response or regulatory agencies.
They’ll likely be responding too, bringing their own staff resources. While agencies often have day-to-day budget or mission constraints that keep them from attending drills at a high level, in an actual event they would have people there. Reach out to response agencies with jurisdiction over your area or industry, to see how they plan their own mobilization and presence they will have in an actual event. You don’t have to plan on mobilizing them, they will be doing so themselves.
How can you speed the process?
- IC/UC Logistics: Download an ICS Form 213 RR template to request additional JIC staffing. The 213RR form lets you request any specific resource to use in the response. In your case, it will be used to provide communicators. It’s not a difficult form to fill out, but it does take time and attention, neither of which you will have if you wait until an incident to fill it out.
- ICS 213 RR Forms are available online. Download one and see how far you get into filling it out. You’ll be responsible to fill out sections 1-9. Focus on Sections 4 and 6. There’s an entire section of the response called Logistics. They can help you fill it your 213RR out, but they can’t help you with sections 4 and 6.
Improvement Plan:
- Identify individuals within your organization who could support the JIC. Look at their competencies, not their experience or training. Do you have a “JIC Positions and Comparable Skills Needed” document to help you determine where people can fit in a JIC?
- Network with known response agency PIOs. Don’t make your first response your first meeting with them! Join them at regional exercises when possible.
- Find local drills and ask organizers if you can attend them as an observer, or as a participant. Your state Ecology agency may have a listing of upcoming regulatorily required exercises. As an example, here’s Washington State Department of Ecology’s Northwest Area Committee Exercise Schedule.
- Join known PIO networks, particularly those where you have operations. Attend meetings with them when they’re held!
- Train, train train – both yourself and the people you identify in your organization. Local communication consultants will be happy to provide training sessions and custom drills to provide basic knowledge and hands-on experience for your team.
- Note that FEMA provides extensive online training courses that allow you and your team to gain knowledge now, rather than landing in a challenging response without being prepared.
Don’t wait until you need more help to identify your resources! It’s better to recruit and screen help before you need it.